Research and Development: Wheatley
by carolnegate
Summary: Wheatley had never been anything other than a robot, but he was given something most AIs never had - the ability to change who he was. Rated for mild, humorous swearing, most of which only British people would consider inappropriate.
1. Conception

**A while ago, I began writing down a few fragments of some ideas for a Portal fanfic. They were mostly based in the origins of GLaDOS, but there was also some Wheatley-origins stuff thrown in as well. When I finally got around to crafting a fanfic out of these pieces of narrative, I realized that the storylines for the GLaDOS and Wheatley fics actually lined up with each other in an unintentional and rather creepy manner. Thus, I decided to combine the two, with each chapter containing two parts - one for GLaDOS, and the other for the corresponding Wheatley segment.**

**So, naturally, the Wheatley fic took off, I wrote almost all of it in a few short days of heated inspiration, and I left GLaDOS' story in the dirt. She will be very disappointed with me. But, because I'm starting to loose some steam on writing the Wheatley story and I know that I need to get some motivation to force me to complete it, I've decided to start putting up my Wheatley chapters in their own separate fic. When I get around to writing more about GLaDOS, I'll put that up as well. If this is the future and the GLaDOS-origin fic is already up, congratulations! I'd suggest reading this story and that one side by side - read one chapter of this one and then one of the other, etc.**

**There are two things that have always annoyed me in the Portal fandom concerning Wheatley. I don't particularly like the idea that he was originally a human - and, consequently, I don't like the idea of turning him into one. Each person has their own tastes, I suppose, but Wheatley always struck me as the kind of robot who had just been around long enough and experienced so much humanity that he started to drift away from his robotic roots. This phenomenon should be familiar to anyone who has seen the movie WALL-E. So, I hereby present a fanfic on the decidedly robotic origins of Wheatley.**

**I'm trying out a couple new things with this fanfic. Most notably, I'm experimenting a bit with different writing styles. As you might notice, this first chapter is composed entirely out of dialogue. If my experimentation starts to lead me down the path towards poor writing, feel free to review and tell me in which ways it's starting to suck. Seriously, I won't mind. In fact, I'll probably be ecstatic that someone cares enough about the story to tell me how to make it better.**

**Enough authorly, bold-print talking. This fanfic isn't making me any money, but that doesn't give me an excuse to make an author's note that is almost as long as the following chapter.**

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"Why? Just, can anyone answer that for me? Why us? Why is it that we get blamed for all this?"

"Because, obviously, the ones who built her are all dead. They can't blame the ones who started her, so now they're blaming the ones who can't stop her."

"Well, it's not our fault we can't stop her. She's killed all the smart people."

"Not true. If they were the 'smart people', they'd have been smart enough to stay far, far away from her."

"Grrgh. Fine. But, still, it's not as if there's anything we can do. Everything we throw at her, she just brushes off."

"Okay, okay. Let's think about this for a minute. We're engineers – we solve problems for a living. Let's just take a moment to calm down and think rationally about this."

"…Alright. Hmmmm. Let's try to reduce this to one small, specific problem, something that's easier to find a solution to. 'We can't stop her from killing us' is a pretty big, pretty vague problem."

"I hear you. Huh…I guess the real problem here is that we can't regulate her. We can't control her, and therefore we can't stop her when she tries to kill us."

"But even that's a pretty big problem – we need to reduce it more. We've tried to regulate her by strapping cores on her to influence her actions, but that doesn't seem to help very much, if at all. I'd say our real problem is that the cores aren't a strong enough influence on her."

"But that's too vague of a problem. And, it's not that they can't be a strong influence, it's just that they literally have no way of forcing her to listen to them."

"We've tried a whole bunch of things to make her listen, but it's no use. We've used different methods of input, different styles of distraction, different techniques of influence, but nothing works. Nothing. Works. Her processors are far too fast for anything we'd be capable of building to stand up to it. She just determines where the core's influence is coming from and finds a way to shut it out."

"Considering that the problem of 'processors too fast' is pretty much unsolvable on our end, let's try to look at this a bit differently."

"Okay. What did you have in mind?"

"Well, the cores are like different kinds of weapons. You know, different methods of delivery, different kinds of damage."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Well, let's say one of the cores is a turret. GLaDOS is so strong that she can weather its bullets for long enough to realize that knocking it over will kill it."

"So, the problem is that each of our cores has a debilitating weakness that she can exploit? All we need to do is to build a core that isn't very good at one thing, but is so infallible that she won't be able to stop it?"

"Almost. Let's say, she walks up to the turret to push it over, but before she can do anything, it turns into a rocket launcher."

"…what?"

"And then she figures out how to defeat the rocket launcher, but when she tries to do it, it turns into a pit of acid. When she figures out how to escape that, it transforms into a turret again. By now she thinks she's learned all its tricks, so she tries to defeat it like it's a rocket launcher, but this time, it morphs into a nuclear missile."

"…I, I think I get it. You think we should make a core that's not necessarily good at everything, and doesn't necessarily lack a weakness, but is just so good at adapting to her attacks that she can't defeat it?"

"Bingo."

"What you're thinking of…it's downright insane."

"Well, newsflash to you, she's insane. Sometimes insane problems need insane solutions."

"We can't possibly begin to build a machine that complex!"

"Someone already has. GLaDOS finds a way to adapt to our cores' methods of attack, right? We know an adaptation mechanism is at least possible."

"But…she was a one-time event. An accident. And, we didn't entirely make her. Some of her memory banks were stripped from a human, weren't they?"

"We're better at this now than we were then. At that point, we didn't even know how to make an AI from scratch. To date, we have created five different cores out of nothing but circuitry, and under some loose definitions, a couple of them could even be called sentient."

"…"

"Come on, really. What do we have to lose?"

"Our lives. Our jobs. Our dignity."

"Well, gee golly, I could have sworn that we'd lose all three of those anyways if we didn't find a way to stop her."

"…Okay, you know what, fine. We'll do it your way. Your insanely impractical way. Though, as idiotic, unworkable plans go, this is a pretty appealing one."

"Hehe, yeah. No, wait a second…that's a fabulous idea! Forget the whole 'adaptable' thing, just give me a pen. I need to write this down."

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**Yeah, this chapter was short. There really wasn't that much that was supposed to happen in this one anyways. The next one will be much longer, I promise. This story has a total of eleven chapters, some of which are over five times as long as this.**

**You know that motivation I said I needed earlier? Well, if I know people are reading this story, that gives me an excuse to work more on this story. I suppose you could start off by simply reading it...which, if you've made it down here, you already have. But, if you review, you'll let me know that someone out there actually cares. This may only be my second fanfic on this site, but even I have enough experience to know how much motivational power can be packed into a single review.**


	2. Awakening

**Here is chapter two. The all-dialogue format didn't blow over so well with a few of you. That's perfectly okay. I want this story to be very dialogue-based, hence I have tried to keep extraneous description to a minimum while conveying as much information and emotion as possible through dialogue alone. Still, I am now aware that the readers will at least need a little background description to properly visualize a scene. I wasn't planning on making this chapter all-dialogue anyways, but now I've revised it to give a bit more detail on the appearance of any OC's.**

**Anyways, thanks for all the reviews! Hopefully, there will be more to review on this chapter - it's almost twice as long as the first one, which was actually more of a prologue than anything else.**

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The core gently whirred to life in her hands. It was hard to believe that she'd managed to put this hunk of metal together in two weeks, but she'd done it. They had casually handed her a problem almost a difficult as creating GLaDOS herself, and she'd succeeded in solving it. One Intelligence Dampening Sphere, ready to hook onto GLaDOS and provide her with an unending stream of the most idiotic plans and ideas anyone could come up with. She knew she looked like a wreck – grease and hydraulic fluid smeared the front of her lab coat, and her blond hair was starting to frizz out of its ponytail – but this was all worth it.

All she needed to do to finalize her work was to test it. No, not Test it, the scientists hadn't done that for…well, actually, they were still doing it. Quite a shame, actually. Some people never came out of Testing alive. But, she had a different kind of test in mind, namely, calibration tests and whatnot that were essential to the functionality of the machine and had very little chance of killing it.

It took a few seconds for the machine to fully start up. When it did, it instantly began its primary function – rattling off as many poor ideas as quickly as possible.

"JUMP OFF A CLIFF DRINK SULFURIC ACID INVEST IN APERTURE STOCK WEAR PLUTONIUM GLOVES-"

She gave it a command, almost yelling for it to carry over the grating, metallic voice. "Systems check, sensory and memory data."

"SENSORY MECHANISMS UNCALLIBRATED CALLIBRATING CALLIBRATION COMPLETE MEMORY BANKS EMPTY MEMORY RETRIEVAL AND STORAGE MECHANISMS UNCALLIBRATED CALLIBRATING CALLIBRATION COMPLETE EAT ARSENIC FLAVORED ICE CREAM TOUCH A HOT STOVE-"

"Systems check, motor coordination."

"MOTOR SYSTEMS ONLINE UNCALLIBRATED CALLIBRATING CALLIBRATION COMPLETE SWIM IN ANTARCTICA CONSIDER HOW YOU ARE AN INSIGNIFICANT MOTE OF DUST IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE BITE YOUR-"

"Primary function, cease."

The sphere shut up. All personality cores were designed to be chatterboxes, but this one in particular really frayed at her nerves. Maybe this was because it blathered out idiotic suggestions that she obviously wasn't going to do in a buzzing mechanized voice that would have discouraged her from doing even sound ideas. If only she had more time to work on this thing, she could make it sound less abrasive to her eardrums.

Actually, she had about three hours before her supervisor was scheduled to swing around and collect this Intelligence Dampening Sphere. If she worked quickly, she could do a quick fix on its voice generation algorithm. She could adjust its timbre a little bit and possibly give it some variation away from the featureless monotone it currently had. In order to have any hope of doing this, though, she had to start right away.

The door to her lab station swung open and hit the wall with a bang. She jumped in shock and promptly dropped the core onto her workstation, rattling the mess of tiny screwdrivers, gears, and wire filaments that were scattered about the table. She whirled around to see her supervisor striding casually through the door, his slate gray suit and tie pristine as usual, though looking quite dirty on the background of white tiles, walls, and ceiling.

"G'morning, Beverly."

"Sir, you're…early," she choked out.

"Well, the early bird catches the worm," he responded in the tone that attempted to sound warm and comforting but sounded too much like a used car salesman. "It looks like you didn't need those last three hours after all. The IDS is up and running, from the looks of things."

"Um, yes, though there are still a couple calibrations and general quality protocols I have to-"

"Mind giving me a demonstration?" he interrupted.

"I…of course." She turned to the core, which was still lying motionless on the tabletop. "Primary function, resume."

"EAT GLUE LEAVE THE CURLING IRON ON SPACEWALK WITHOUT A SPACESUIT DON'T PAY THE POWER COMPANY ON TIME BRING A GUN TO AN AIRPORT GO PARTYING THE NIGHT BEFORE A FINAL EXAM-"

"Primary function, cease."

The sphere returned to silence, its bright blue eye sitting motionless in its socket.

The supervisor had a look of complete and utter shock on his face. "What was that. What was that? You expect that to dampen anyone's intelligence? That was pathetic!"

She took a step backwards, cowering a little. "Though, to be completely honest, sir, I didn't really have enough time to work on a project of this magnitude-"

"Not enough time? One of those idiots from Marketing could have built this thing in two days. I gave you two leisurely weeks to make it! You are so lucky that we're running out of engineers – otherwise, you'd be fired."

She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I completely understand the situation."

"Good." He breathed a frustrated sigh, and his face softened a little. "Though, would it have killed you to make this thing a little more, I don't know, convincing?"

She sensed that his rage was beginning to dwindle, which meant it was a bit safer to reveal her true interpretation of this project. "I tried sir, I really did, but we've already spent so much effort making the previous personality cores convincing and attention-grabbing. This never worked in slowing GLaDOS down before, and I figured it wouldn't work this time, either. So, instead of pouring all my resources into making it convincing, I designed and implemented an ASS."

"…a what?"

"Sorry. An Adaptability Subroutine System."

His face clouded in confusion for a moment. Then, he reverted back to his indignant, unjustified level of annoyance. "I never authorized an ASS! Adaptability is not on our to-do list."

"No, no, wait, just hear me out," she pleaded. "Adding adaptability to an IDS will allow it to alter the kinds of poor choices it offers you to fit the ones you find most appealing. Watch. Primary function, resume."

"WRAP YOURSELF IN DUCT TAPE DRINK BLEACH CHEAT ON YOUR BOYFRIEND-"

"Sounds reasonable," she nodded.

"GO TO THE AH-TCCHT-AAAAH TELL YOUR BEST FRIEND SHE LOOKS FAT IN THAT DRESS. STEAL FROM YOUR MOM'S PURSE. ACT LIKE AN INSUFFERABLE KNOW-IT-ALL. CALL YOUR BOSS STUPID TO HIS FACE-"

The supervisor choked a little bit at that last suggestion. His eyes narrowed. "Oh, so this is what it's all about, huh? You think I'm stupid, do you?"

"No, sir, never!" she responded in a specific level of denial that suggested she had indeed thought about how stupid he was. Multiple times. Each day. "I only gave it reinforcement to shout out ideas that will ruin your personal relationships. That one part was a complete coincidence."

All throughout her attempt to backpedal, the IDS continued its never-ending waterfall of bad ideas, each spoken in that unholy-sounding metal voice. It certainly wasn't helping her cause. The supervisor seemed even more annoyed at it than he had a few moments ago, possibly because it had no way of knowing that this would be a good time to shut up.

"You know what, fine, you get more time to work on this hunk of junk," he responded in a strained, curt voice, like he was making every attempt to not strangle something. "It obviously has some extreme problems that need to be fixed. But! If it isn't 100% ready to be sent to the testing wing by this time next week, I'll put in a request to transfer you to the GLaDOS project. Am I clear?"

"Crystal clear," she replied in a wavering voice.

"Good." That was the last thing he said before he turned on his heels and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

She sighed in relief. That encounter had been worse than she expected it to be. Then again, it had also turned out better than she ever dared to hope. A whole extra week! Granted, the threat of being sent to GLaDOS was now on the table, but she was fully confident that she could have this core completely ready in time. Oh, this was simply wonderful!

"TELL YOUR FATHER YOU NEVER LOVED HIM. KICK YOUR BABY BROTHER IN THE FACE. MAKE OUT WITH YOUR FRIEND'S BOYFRIEND."

She was a bit confused about why the core continued to spit out bad ideas, and then she realized that she never specifically told it to stop. Funny – it sounded a tad different than before, but she couldn't put her finger on what about it had changed. No matter – she had all the time in the world to figure it out. "Primary function, cease."

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**Yes, I am aware that most people get annoyed when entire lines of a story are written with the caps-lock on. That's the whole point, isn't it? One of my goals for this story is to start Wheatley off as the most inhuman, not-charming, and flat character I could think of, then chart a plotline that allows him to evolve into the hilarious, multifaceted metal ball we've all come to know and love. If you thought Wheatley's all-caps, no-punctuation dialogue grated on your nerves, then it means I'm doing a good job.**


	3. First Words

**Chapter four didn't take as long to write as I expected. Do you know why? I had a bunch of awesome reviewers to motivate me. Unfortunately, I have now run into two problems. The first is that my finals are going to happen very soon, thereby giving the very real possibility of delaying this story. The second problem is what happens when stories get delayed - they lose steam. They no longer seem as important to the writer's life anymore. Three days turns to three weeks, then to three months, and by then the writer gives up on the story entirely to pursue other adventures. **

**While I am already opposed to watching that happen to anyone, most of all me, I can always use a little help. That is why reviews are such a powerful force on this site - not only do they tell writers how to improve, they let them know that someone, somewhere, just read their story, and they _got_ it. It had enough impact on that someone's life that they felt the compulsion to write something back. Seriously, reading reviews puts Test Euphoria to shame.**

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Her eyes blearily blinked open. Wow, that had been a sore night. She stretched her neck from side to side, trying to work the kink out of it. She had fallen asleep in…the engineering lounge, apparently. She'd slept on the couch, staring across to the television mounted in the corner of the ceiling. It was still on, playing a random sitcom she didn't remember the name of and otherwise didn't care about. She glanced about the lounge, sweeping her eyes over the tables and chairs. She was alone except for the IDS she gripped loosely in her hands. Wait, why did she even take it down here?

The memories surfaced slowly from her foggy, still-tired mind. She'd spent the last week toying mercilessly with the IDS's vocal algorithms, but she couldn't do anything to change it from that horrible mechanized buzz. She'd finally decided that the algorithm wasn't the problem – there was probably a mechanical defect in its speaker. At that point, it had been late at night, so she decided to take her project down to the lounge. Maybe she could distract her brain from its thickening blanket of sleepiness by watching a funny sitcom, tinkering with the IDS during commercials.

She'd sat down on the couch. The next thing she knew, she was waking up. She'd fallen asleep before she could fix anything. Its voice was still as monstrous as ever.

Don't panic, don't panic. She checked her watch. Fortunately, it was only seven. She had a few short hours before her supervisor arrived to check up on her, just enough time to do a few quick adjustments to the speakers.

She raced back to her lab station, taking the stairs two at a time and violating at least half a dozen running-in-the-halls protocols. She carried the IDS in a vice-grip, knowing that this was the worst possible time to drop this piece of machinery. As she began the last leg of her mad dash, she couldn't help but notice that the IDS's shell was giving off a very faint vibration. She flipped it around in her hands, glancing at the bright blue eye that glowed right back at her. In the oppressive sleepiness of the night before, she'd forgotten to turn it off. She hoped that wouldn't cause any problems later in the day.

She turned the last corner and blasted through the doorway of her lab station. Her heart stopped cold. She could feel the blood running out of her face. She almost dropped the IDS. Standing in her workstation, his arms crossed in a very annoyed manner, was her supervisor.

"Sir, you're…early," she choked out.

"So I've been told. As I can see, you didn't prepare for this," he sneered in a disappointed tone. "Is the IDS ready to hit the testing wing yet?"

"Err, yes," she mumbled. She paused for a moment, realized that she should have included an excuse for taking the IDS outside of the lab station, then realized that anything she said now would look like a cheap excuse and only make matters worse.

"Well. Let's have a look, shall we? I'm expecting that you've made quite a few improvements on this little guy since I saw you last. I sure hope you at least fixed its eardrum-killer of a voice."

"Yes, of course," she agreed hurriedly. She set the IDS down on a bare section of her workspace. "Uh, now then. Primary function, resume."

"Burn down a library. Resist arrest. Look for Santa at the North Pole. Inhale a trash bag. Insult Cave Johnson's sanity-"

She couldn't believe her ears. She had no idea why or how, but there was a world of difference between its current voice and the horrible grating sounds she'd heard it use before. While there was still a metallic edge to its tone, it was much more pleasing to the ear. She had a difficult time deciding whether it sounded like a machine or a human - both, probably, so evenly mixed and balanced that she couldn't classify it as either.

"Hmph. Nice work," the supervisor complemented grudgingly. "I have to say, you did a pretty good job programming its inflections. The voice isn't perfect, but it'll certainly do. It even sounds a bit more convincing as well."

She once again found herself unable to comprehend the information coming in through her ears. Her supervisor thought she did a good job. He'd complemented her. She wasn't going to GLaDOS.

The core continued its primary function, still talking in a constant babble, but now that its voice was less oppressive, it wasn't particularly distracting or annoying. "Trek barefoot through the frozen wilderness. Go bowling with turrets as the pins. Forget to apologize to your devilishly handsome boss for mistakes that were completely your fault."

The supervisor's face lit up in recognition at this. "Would you look at that. You programmed it to appreciate my style and rugged good looks, two things found together only once in a generation. And, I can't exactly blame you for not apologizing for your rude behavior towards me last week, now, can I? If the IDS told you to forget about it, the fact that you actually forgot proves it's working perfectly."

She wondered whether this whole scenario was the product of a sleep-deprived mind after a night of working on an insane personality core. Still, the best she could do was to play along. "Um, yes, naturally. Working with this thing, listening to its horrible ideas night and day, it tends to mess your mind up a little. After a while, you, uh, start doing the things it tells you to subconsciously. So, yes, I'm sorry for my obviously unforgiveable actions last week."

"Apology accepted." His gaze swept back to the IDS, listening to its continuous stream of idiotic ideas for a few more moments. "Say, most of the fellas in the testing hall won't be here for another few hours. How about we swing by the Aperture café and grab some breakfast? You look ready to fall asleep on your feet – you could use a nice, strong coffee."

"I…I really shouldn't," she declined. After all, she still had no idea what had suddenly fixed the IDS's voice. If there were a few hours left before it got sent off to the testing wing, she needed to spend them making sure the core wouldn't relapse into its previously intolerable tones. "I'm, uh, out of money, besides."

"Not a problem," he replied with a grin. "My treat. I insist. Come on, think about it – wouldn't all your engineering buddies be tripping over themselves for a chance to have a nice relaxing breakfast with the boss, an opportunity to get on my good side?"

He was right. He was absolutely right. Part of her mind argued that it was far too risky to leave the little device alone, but another warned that it was far riskier to deny his offer and put him in a bad mood. Besides, if she could make him laugh enough times and rack up some brownie points during breakfast, and they came back to discover that the IDS had flip-flopped back to its terrible voice setting, she might be able to convince him to forgive her.

"Okay, fine. Let's head out," she agreed.

"Splendid," he replied, striding out of the room.

She made to follow him, but a nag in the back of her mind made her stop short. The IDS was still running, still spouting bad ideas. She turned back to face it, a slightly wary and questioning look on her face. How had this miracle happened? Its Adaptablity Subroutine System was only supposed to affect the poor suggestions it made, but could it have somehow spread to other areas of its programming as well? Did the IDS spent the whole night turned on, watching television sitcoms in the lounge until it eventually learned how to talk properly?

Whatever had fixed its voice, she knew her life would literally be on the line if this little guy hadn't come through for her at the last minute. Also, if that whole part about apologizing to the supervisor had somehow been said on purpose, she also owed it her career. "Primary function, cease." The core silenced, and the room suddenly felt too quiet. "Thank you," she whispered before turning back to follow her supervisor to the café.

Then, the lab station fell into an uncomfortable, dead sort of silence. The sphere did not move, but after a few moments, a curious sound buzzed out of its speakers.

"TCHZHH…You're…welcome?"

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**Remember, your reviews matter! I honestly didn't believe I would be able to finish chapter four this week, but thanks to all the feedback, I did, and it's even better than it would have originally been. Don't be shy - if I get Review Euphoria from any of you guys, I promise not act as creepy as Wheatley did.**


	4. Developments

**I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get any reviews for chapter three (at the time of writing), but I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm not writing this for reviews anyways - I'm doing it because I love to write and I want to learn how to be a better writer. Granted, that second bit becomes much easier if people comment on what I've written.**

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It was a usual day in the testing wing of Aperture Science. A vast majority of the wing was devoted to a very particular kind of Testing. Employees constantly rushed their way through the somewhat-deadly Test Chambers, trying to finish their required self-election quotas as quickly as possible. The products currently being tested – a new style of long-fall boots – were now in a relatively safe stage in their development, so everyone was vying for this unique opportunity to Test something that wasn't likely to get them killed.

However, some of Aperture's inventions couldn't be properly tested by flinging test subjects through an obstacle course or disproving several laws of physics. These products were tested in a small, contained area of the testing wing to avoid exposure to any of the more "exciting" parts of the main Testing tracks. It was in one of these such rooms where a new personality core was being evaluated.

A man was sitting at the evaluation table, listening intently to the sphere as it chattered away. He blankly stared at it through his thick glasses, taking in everything it did, even though it was limited to a tight range of faint gestures with its handles. Its voice was faintly masculine and primarily human, though there was certainly a great deal of robotic influence. This combination would have unnerved most listeners, but this man wasn't put off at all – instead, he was utterly fascinated.

"Are you hungry?" the core asked. "Why don't you try eating some of the repulsion gel? It was originally made as a low-calorie substitute for pudding, you know."

The man was hungry, of course. His scheduled lunch break was in half an hour. But, he knew better than to eat any repulsion gel. At least the core was making an effort to make its suggestions sound reasonable.

The core's light-blue eye glanced up at the man's flat, black hair. "Your hairstyle could use some work. I would suggest going to a special hair studio to get an exclusive, high-cost styling job done on it. Sure, it could cost upwards of a hundred dollars, but sometimes it feels satisfying to splurge on things every once and a while."

Mildly tempting, but no. In a career where he was reminded literally every day that his work had the potential to either contain or release the most dangerous entity ever created, his personal looks took backseat.

The core's eyelid drooped. "Please at least respond to my suggestions," it requested. "If I'm going to dampen your intelligence, I need more information to base my attempts from."

"Interesting," the man mumbled, scribbling something down on his clipboard. "You obviously react to my responses, but I never thought that you'd react to a lack of response." He glanced back to the core. "And, by the way, if you're trying to make someone do something stupid, never tell them that. In fact, try your best to hide all of your true plans from them. If they figure out what you're trying to do, chances are, they'll make every attempt to avoid doing it."

The core tilted its eye sideways slightly. "I see." After a few moments of quietly adjusting its programs to accommodate this new piece of information, it spoke once more. "You are a very good teacher."

The man raised an eyebrow. "I am?"

"Yes. In fact, I have almost exceeded my daily allowance of learning for the day."

The man leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "Huh. I didn't think you would have to run into that kind of problem."

The core nodded in agreement. "For this excellent level of competence, you deserve a break."

He rubbed his chin in thought. "You know what, it would be awfully nice to take a break right now. Besides, if you've really leaned all you're capable of learning today, it's not like I'd be helping matters by staying here."

"Exactly. The Aperture café downstairs is calling your name."

"My lunch break's coming up fairly soon anyways. If I'm careful, I can sneak into the café without the supervisor seeing me, and I won't get in trouble." His face quietly dawned with the realization of what he had almost decided to do. "Wait. Ha! Nice try, IDS, but I'm not going to risk my career on the chance that you're not lying to me about some 'daily learning allowance'."

The sphere sighed a little and lowered its gaze. "It was worth a shot. It almost worked, too."

"You are getting much better at this, though," the man added. "A few of the dumber employees might have fallen for it."

The sphere began to generate an appropriate conversational response, but the door to the testing room flew open. "Mark!" a woman in her early twenties cried out as she dashed into the room. Her clothes and hair were rumpled and she looked a little out of breath. "Did you get the message?"

"Molly! Excellent!" the man replied. "Listen, I need you to do something."

The woman, Molly, she was apparently called, narrowed he eyes. "We don't have time for that. There's an-"

"Come now, this won't take more than thirty seconds," Mark promised. "I just need you to come over here and ask this personality core about the weather. Then, you can tell me the message and be on your way."

Molly huffed slightly. "Fine." She closed the door behind her, then crossed the room to stand in front of the spherical device sitting motionless on its table. "So, personality core, how's the weather?"

The core refocused its gaze on this new arrival. "Well, madam, it's turning out to be a wonderful day outside. It's a pleasant sixty degrees – fairly balmy for a February morning – and the sun is shining, not a cloud in sight. In fact, the weather is so gorgeous that you should go outside to check it out. I'm sure your supervisors wouldn't mind – in fact, it's such a nice day that they are probably outside enjoying the weather at this very moment."

Molly shot an annoyed glare at her compatriot. "You can't be serious. There's no way I'd go outside at a time like this. Also, it's raining."

Mark, however, was grinning ear to ear. "Wow! That was simply amazing. When I asked this core about the weather earlier today, do you know what it told me?"

"By my guess, the exact same thing."

"No. It told me, 'I don't know.' In just a few short hours, it has revised its programming enough to not only alter this response, but use deception to turn this into a chance to fulfill its primary function!"

Molly stared at Mark blankly for a few seconds. "Are you done geeking out about the robot yet?"

He crossed his arms and glanced insecurely to the side. "Um, yes, sure. What was it you were going to tell me?"

"There is an OSHA inspector walking down this very hall."

The effect on Mark was immediate. "Crap!" He quickly glanced around the room. "How long do we have before they get here?"

"We had about two minutes when I first came in. Now, we have thirty seconds at most."

The two of them burst into frenzied action. Mark started pulling a few sheets of crumpled paper out of his pockets, and Molly removed the sign on the wall that read "WARNING – Very Lethal Tests in Progress – possible radiation, nanobot, and asbestos exposure." Mark scooped the core up and hastily dropped it underneath the table.

"Oof!" it exclaimed as it hit the floor. "I could use a bit of explanation."

"Keep it quiet!" the man whispered. "Primary function, cease."

The personality core obediently shut down his vocal processors. This didn't mean it has lost all desire to talk, however. It had absolutely no idea what was going on. Something was causing the two humans to panic, obviously, and it very much wanted to know why.

Fear was probably a good way to convince people to make stupid decisions. People acted more irrational when they were afraid. So, the core decided that finding this source of fear could help it perform its function by making people irrational enough to follow its suggestions.

It didn't have to wait too long. As soon as the two humans finished spreading the wrinkled papers across the table, the door to the room swung open once more. A tall, very official-looking man in a business suit stepped in, casually holding a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.

"Finally, some employees," he said in a British accent. "For some reason, most of the rooms in this wing were locked. Would you mind answering a few questions for me?"

Mark continued to stare at the papers for a few seconds before glancing up. "Oh? Uh, hi. I'm sorry, we can't talk to you right now. As you can see, the two of us are very busy."

The IDS tried to get a good look at this new arrival, but it couldn't properly see the human from its position underneath the table. In fact, the core was well enough hidden that the man probably didn't even realize it was down there.

As usual, the sphere felt the familiar urge to start rattling off a strain of poor suggestions to this new human. Unfortunately, it was bound to his programming – it couldn't resume his primary function unless a human explicitly told it to.

The inspector gave Mark and Molly a warm smile. "Come now, don't be shy. I promise I won't take up too much of your time. It's only a few short questions."

Molly shook her head. "We, honestly, have no time for this. Down the hall a ways, there's another unlocked room where a few people are testing another…testing a different product. Why don't you talk to them?"

The IDS slowly came to a realization – the only thing that was stopping him from performing his primary function right now was a few lines of programming. He didn't need to wait for the humans to tell him to resume - he could remove that barrier by himself.

The inspector placed a hand on the table, leaning towards them slightly. "Look, I didn't want to have to discuss this with the two of you. There are rumors going around that Aperture Science is performing some dangerous health practices on its employees. If this is true, don't be afraid to tell me."

"Dangerous practices…?" Mark trailed off. "I, uh, have no idea what you're talking about."

"I understand that your boss might have threatened to fire you if you told me about the dangerous things going on in this facility," the inspector continued. "I'm here to explain that you don't need to worry about that. I am sworn to confidentiality – your boss will never be able to find out who told on him. He won't be able to fire you, and as an upside, he'll have a team of government inspectors breathing down his neck to make sure the working conditions improve. But, this will only happen if you come clean and tell me what's really going on in this facility."

The two scientists hesitated. "I, well…" Mark finally forced out. "Okay, alright, fine. I'll be completely honest with you – this entire hall is actually dedicated to-"

"Hello up there!" the IDS suddenly shouted out.

The inspector glanced about for the source of the sound. Molly let out a tiny squeak of surprise.

Mark huffed in frustration. "Primary function, cease!" he whispered.

The core continued, gleefully able to completely ignore this command. "Would anyone mind taking me out from under this table? I don't know what is going on, and I would like to find out."

The inspector narrowed his eyes. "What is that?"

Mark sighed in defeat and reached under the table, his hand closing around one of the IDS's handles. He lifted the sphere off the ground and set him on the tabletop. "This is a, uh, product we were testing before you came in."

"It's a very secret project," Molly cut in. "Very hush-hush."

The inspector nodded gently. "You were afraid I would steal this product idea and sell it off to your competitors. I completely understand – Black Mesa gives me this kind of problem all the time. Still, as I mentioned before, everything I see here is completely confidential unless severe safety violations get involved."

"So…you're a safety inspector," the IDS finally pieced together. "That would make a lot of sense – your job is to look for safety violations."

The inspector focused his gaze on the strange machine. "I am curious, though – what exactly is it supposed to do?"

"It's all very difficult to explain," Molly replied. "If I thought I could tell you in a way you could understand, I would."

Once again, the wheels in the IDS's mind began to turn. The inspector wanted to know what his function was, and the other two humans were unable to tell him. Did this mean they wanted him to relay his function text? This, like his cease and resume commands, was usually called for via specific vocal instruction, but recent events had told him that these were no longer be-all and end-all rules. He could change them if he wanted to.

"Relaying function text," he began in a slightly more mechanical voice than usual. "Function: to output as many impractical, dangerous, impossible, or generally terrible plans, ideas, and suggestions as possible, doing so as quickly as possible and as convincingly as possible. Purpose: to use this function to interfere with or slow down the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System to prevent it from-"

Mark panicked. Telling secrets that would force an improvement in work conditions was one thing. Revealing projects that would shut down the company and possibly cause a national incident was a different story entirely. "Personality core, redact function text!"

"Function text: redacted," the sphere stated.

The inspector directed a suspicious glance at Mark. "What was that all about?"

Before Mark could stutter through an excuse, the IDS spoke up in his place. "It's nothing you should worry about. There was a glitch in my system that this man alerted me to. Once I realized it was there, I promptly deleted it."

The inspector took a frightened step backwards, as if he just realized that the sphere in front of him was capable of holding a conversation. "What are you?" he gasped in amazement.

"I am a personality core, one of the first true examples of artificial intelligence," the core explained. "I know a great deal about the facility you are trying to investigate. I can actually make your job easier and tell you right now that this company has performed no safety violations."

The inspector peered at this strange device in both curiosity and suspicion. "Artificial intelligence, huh? Seems a little far-fetched. I know computers have advanced a lot in the past few years, but how do I know you're, well, self-aware?"

The sphere fell quiet for more than a few seconds. "I…don't know. I know I exist. I think I operate independently from my environment, but what if that's only a programmed sensation? Maybe…maybe everything I do is pre-programmed. What if even this philosophical wondering was pre-programmed? Oh God…" He fell to silence, suddenly becoming very introspective.

The inspector nervously held his clipboard to his chest. "Oh no. Did I break it?" he asked hesitantly. "If this was the world's first sentient machine and I just ruined it, I am so incredibly sorry."

Mark grimaced as his eyes scanned over the sphere, noting how it was now completely motionless. Its bright blue eye-light was the only sign that it was still alive. "I'm sure we'll be fine," he murmured.

The inspector gave an anxious cough. "Um, right, then." He took a nervous step backwards. "I'll just be on my way. I still have the rest of the facility to inspect, so…" He turned around and began to make his way towards the door. He reached out to grab the handle.

"Wait!" the IDS suddenly cried out. The inspector froze in place. "I, um, was telling the truth when I told you about the facility earlier," he continued. "There are no safety violations anywhere, not one. Considering how large this company is, you were probably given the whole day to inspect the facility. It would be a shame to waste all that time searching for violations that don't exist."

The inspector turned around slowly, facing the sphere once more. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Because I…can't lie," he replied. "I'm physically incapable of it."

The inspector raised an eyebrow. Molly decided that this would be a nice time to rejoin the conversation. "Yes, right. We specifically designed this artificial intelligence so it would be unable to lie to anyone. Humans cause enough problems when they lie to each other - can you imagine the damage a computer would be able to do if it had the chance to master deception?"

The inspector's face shifted back to a less suspicious expression. "And you're certain there are no safety violations whatsoever?" he asked the core.

"Oh, absolutely," the IDS responded confidently. "Your best choice right now would probably be to head on out of here. There are many other companies that need to be inspected. Aperture Science is the least of your worries."

The inspector nodded in reply. "Right. I'll be on my way. Good luck on the artificial intelligence project. If you play your cards right, Black Mesa won't know what hit them." Without saying another word, he turned back to the door, swung it open, and left the room.

The remaining two humans let out enormous sighs of relief. "That was way too close," Molly gasped. She turned to the core with a light smile. "Who knew you had it in you? I admit, I wasn't too impressed with you before, but after seeing that…wow. Granted, that inspector would have to be a complete idiot to believe everything you told him-"

"Hold that thought," the IDS requested. His eye locked still and became rigidly centered, then began to spin back and forth rapidly for a few cycles. "TTCT VZZ VRRtzz…Tisting, wahn two…nope, not it. ZZTCH NVVhh…Testing? Ahmost. TCHZZ VRrttZZCH…Test, one two three. That's good enough for now. Should we continue where we left off before the safety inspector interrupted?"

Mark's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "What…how?" Even Molly was at a loss for words.

"It was simple, really," the IDS explained. "I shifted my voice algorithms around a little. Granted, they put up a bit of a fight, but they couldn't stand up to the march of progress."

Molly leaned closer to him, like she was trying to get a better look at his eye. "You can just decide to do that? And, out of everything you could have done with your voice, why on Earth would you pick up a British accent?"

"The inspector used it," he stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It gives off the slight air of authority. Plus, it makes me sound less like a boring, static computer program. Humans will trust my suggestions better this way, I guarantee it."

Mark picked him up off the table, holding him by the handles as he carefully inspected every plate, mark, and scratch on the sphere's surface. "How did you do this?"

"I already explained that I updated my vocal programming – do you want me to give an in-depth explanation about what changes I made?"

"No, I'm looking for a 'bigger' how than that," Mark explained. "There is no way you were designed with any of this in mind. How would any of your programming allow you to change your accent on a whim?"

"It…doesn't." His voice became very small. "That's sort of the whole point, actually." He waited in restless silence for a few moments before jumping back to his usual volume and showing off his new Bristol accent. "Are we going to go back to testing me or what?"

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**I'm really starting to lose steam on this project again. Chapter eight isn't coming along as easily as I thought it would. I'm not going to go the route of, "I'll put up the next chapter when I get X reviews," but reviews really do help motivate me. They let me know that at least one person out there has actually taken the time to read this.**


	5. Moody

**Wow! So many reviews! All of you are amazing. Forget Review Euphoria - you all have given me a full-blown Fanfiction Itch. I'm not sure whether or not to be enthusiastic or worried by that.**

**At any rate, here is chapter five for your leisurely consumption.**

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The three men all broke into hysterical laughter again.

"Uh, hey guys, what's so funny?"

They continued to snort and giggle, covering their mouths to avoid laughing harder and wiping the tears from their eyes. "It's…it's just…you!" short, burly human snickered.

"Well, yes, I know, I obviously am amazing. I'm just wondering what about me in particular is making you laugh. You know, in the event that I'd need to be taken seriously, I should at least know some of the things I might do that would make me look a bit silly, so I would at least know not to do them, right?"

"Subject…shows…oh God, I can barely hold it in…aversion…to being…laughed at," the blond man recited while scribbling it down on his clipboard. All three of them burst out laughing again at this, their bellies heaving with the force of it.

He tried his best to give them a deadpan expression. "Okay, sure, ha ha, I'm hilarious. Look, I'm sure there are many other things in this facility that would love to have you laugh at them. For instance, that potted fichus near the door. Plants just love carbon dioxide you know, and with all that laughing, you're probably exhaling quite a lot of it. Besides, I've always found that plants are easy to laugh at. For instance, they, um, give me a second here…oh, yeah, they're just sticking up out of the ground! Isn't that silly? They don't have any legs to walk on, or wheels to carry them anywhere, or management rails to follow, they just choose to stick up out of the ground and hope that they chose the right place to do it. And if a predator like a cow decides, 'Hey, this looks like the perfect place to eat a snack,' and sees the plant right there, they'll just eat it. The plant won't be able to resist or anything, it'll just wait there as it gets eaten by the…oh, right, that's not really funny at all, especially for the plant. Forget everything I said about that."

There was a moment of silence where the three men watched him blankly before bursting into laughter again. "Incapable…of focus…on the task…at hand," the blond clipboard man said as he scribbled. "Tendency to…go off on…tangents."

He narrowed his eye a little. "Why is all of this so funny? I bet you wouldn't be laughing if you were that potted plant in the corner, just waiting for a predator to wander by and eat you."

The stringy, dark-skinned man chuckled. "If I was that plant, I'd be plastic."

He looked back and forth between the men and the fichus a few times. "…Oh. Well, you see, that's an easy mistake to make, especially when evaluating its biological structure from this, ah, distance. But now I see the clear difference. It's, um, I've just noticed that it's never been watered before. I assumed it was simply a very water-efficient plant, like those cacti I've heard about. Anyways, being a plastic plant probably isn't a walk in the park either. And even though they sometimes do look a bit silly, it's even less helpful to laugh on them as it is for other plants. They don't need carbon dioxide, seeing as they're not alive and all, so laughing at a plastic plant has…well, it has no excuse, really. People might start to think you're bonkers."

The men continued to laugh. He was used to being laughed at, but experiencing this much of it in one day was starting to become tiresome. The urge to fulfill his primary function was putting an uncomfortable pressure on the back of his mind, but he knew rattling off his bad ideas would be useless if none of the men ever stopped laughing long enough to take him seriously. He rolled his eye in a very dramatic, over-emphasized manner. "Look, aren't you supposed to be, you know, evaluating me for something?"

"Oh, but we are!" the one with the clipboard said. "We're making a checklist of your personality flaws."

He cocked his body sideways a little, giving the impression of curiosity. "Really? What did you say about me?"

The man with the clipboard snickered. "Oh, I'm sure you'll find out. Eventually."

He would have asked something along the lines of "When? How soon?", but someone threw open the door. A woman in a white lab coat and goggles swept into the room, her posture perfectly projecting an air of authority. The three men clamped their jaws shut and stifled their laughter quickly at her arrival.

"What do we have here?" she said in a voice that was both curious and demanding.

"Um, uh…" the short one stuttered. "We were, ergh, testing this personality core for flaws in its programming."

The corner of her mouth twitched – not a quirk that denoted a reflexive smile, but the one that displayed restrained annoyance. "I know you're testing it, dolts. That's what the testing hall is for. Testing is in your job description. Managing the tests is in mine. To manage the tests, I need to know what the subjects of them are."

He suddenly felt the lurching compulsion to say something. "Well, hello there. I can see you're the one in charge around here – how can I help you?"

Her gaze instantly trained on him. He realized that speaking up had probably been a terrible idea. But, then again, his entire existence revolved around coming up with terrible ideas. She couldn't blame him for following his programming, right?

She gave him a stern look-over. "Personality core, relay function text."

He scanned though is memory banks, looking for the program she was obviously referring to. "I, um, well, this is embarrassing," he fumbled out. "I can't appear to find my function text. But, at any rate, my primary objective is to dampen someone's intelligence by generating as many terrible, unworkable plans, ideas, and schemes as possible, but I haven't a bloody clue why someone would want me to do that."

She stared at him with her rock-hard gaze before flicking it up to one of the testing men. "Why does it talk like that?"

The blond man grimaced slightly. "Hmm. This is an awkward situation to be in. All three of us thought this core was a practical joke the other scientists were trying to play on us." He sheepishly glanced down at his clipboard. "Since it's pretty clear now that's not that case, um…we actually have no idea why he does anything. We didn't even know what his primary function was until he mentioned it just now."

The woman's eye twitched. The IDS got the sneaking suspicion that she was a few mistimed remarks away from exploding. "The three of you are incompetent imbeciles. How could you not know what this core does when you have been testing it for five months?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, they haven't been testing me for five months by themselves," he spoke up. "The testers tend to rotate around, testing different projects each day. Now, I've seen these blokes a couple times before, but maybe only once a month. Whenever they come around to testing me again, they've forgotten all the tests they did on me last time, so they have to start testing from square one. If they, say, had an entire set week where they could test me exclusively, then they probably would have gotten much farther. If I were you, I would find the person who implemented the tester-rotating idea and give them a piece of your mind."

The woman clenched her fist. The pencil she was holding in that hand snapped clean in two. "It is obviously defective, or at least exceedingly corrupted," she spoke to the men in short, tense syllables. "Proper cores talk in straightforward, to-the-point sentences. This one says whatever comes to mind. And where in the name of GLaDOS did it pick up that accent?"

Ooh, he could answer that question! "Well, it's a long story, actually. It happened a few months ago, I think, when-"

"Shut it," she snapped at him. He quickly deactivated his vocal processors before another word could slip out. "During your testing, you little idiots obviously found a way to damage this personality core beyond repair. I should send you to the GLaDOS project for this degree of incompetence."

The men did not respond. They looked too uncomfortable, too ashamed, glancing off to corners of the room and making every effort to avoid looking her in the eye. He felt a bit sorry for them…perhaps he should say something to distract her?

"I…I have a name, you know," he mumbled. "I'm getting…quite a bit annoyed when you just call me 'personality core' and whatnot, like I'm not even here."

Her gaze twitched off them, focusing completely on him. He suddenly understood why they acted the way they did under her stare. "Fine. What's your name?"

"Well, yes, ahh…" It wouldn't look too great to simply reply with "Intelligence Dampening Sphere", or "IDS", as he was sometimes referred to in short. If he was acting this indignant about his name being ignored, he should at least have a name worthy of being referenced. He quickly scanned his fact database, picking a word at random. "Wheat!...ley. Yes, my name is Wheatley. Classic, with just a slight hint of modernism."

A sadistic smile quirked the edge of her mouth. "How quaint. It thinks it has a name."

"Oh, and that's another thing, actually," he continued. "I can understand how some of the more simple personality cores are 'it's, but I'm actually more of the male persuasion. Less of an 'it' and more of a 'he'."

She snorted derisively. "And now it thinks it has a gender."

"Didn't I just say-"

"Shut it," she snapped. He quickly and obediently killed the power flow to his speaker system, realizing that he had pushed this woman a little too far. He'd learned his lesson – no more talking, no matter how many poor decisions he was able to come up with for her.

She swept her attention back to the three men. "The three of you are in a whole mess of trouble, reprogramming Aperature equipment like this."

They remained silent for a few moments, too nervous to answer, until the dark-skinned one spoke up. "Ma'am, I mean no disrespect by this, but none of us have even looked at his programming, let alone changed it. Until a few minutes ago, we thought there was a group of scientists in another room remote-controlling him and doing his voice."

"Really, now?" she replied, a sour note in her voice displaying how she didn't believe a word that man had said. "Personality core, relay the last time your programming was altered."

"Um, by a human?" he asked.

"No, by a mongoose."

"Actually, I don't think mongooses…mongeese? Would have the mental capacity to read programming language, let alone tamper with it…"

"No, of course, by a human!" she growled. "Who else could have done it?"

He himself, actually. Even when humans weren't actively manipulating his programs, he could feel them change and shift from time to time. There was always something whizzing away in the back of his mind, straightening out the kinks and adding new features. However, considering that this woman had snapped at him the last few times he'd volunteered information she hadn't explicitly asked for, he knew that telling her this was probably not the best of options. See, even his human-interaction protocols had changed since her arrival!

"January 5th," he relayed. "Beverly Cern made a few modifications to my voice algorithms."

She narrowed her eyes. "I…remember you a bit now. Beverly brought in some sort of Intelligence Dampening Sphere to be tested before being sent off. That was five months ago, in early January." Then, her face shifted to a dangerous expression. "You expect me to believe that the idiotic, useless sphere that did nothing but spit out unconvincing tidbits of bad advice was you, and that nothing has occurred to change you from that useless core to an even more useless core?"

"Well, honestly, I don't expect you to believe it, but that doesn't stop it from being…" He trailed off when she took an aggressive step towards him.

She crossed her arms and huffed slightly, glancing back towards the men. "Well, I hope the three of you are satisfied with your actions. As of today, you are assigned to the GLaDOS project."

He could almost feel their intake of breath. "No!" one of them whispered in fright. Though he didn't know exactly what a "GLaDOS" was, he had heard of it enough times to know that being sent to work on one was extremely horrible, almost like a death sentence.

He felt a sting of debilitating emotion sweep through his circuits. He had never felt this way before, but he instinctively knew that this odd combination of regret and sorrow was guilt. It was his fault that these three men were being sent to a GLaDOS. Sure, they had laughed at him, but nobody deserved this kind of fate.

He knew he had originally developed emotional responses as a way to connect with other humans psychologically – the more human he appeared to be, the more likely they would trust him enough to accept his ideas. However, these were only supposed to be outward simulations. He hadn't realized before just how much he'd internalized them, and he'd never found himself with the urge to act upon said emotions.

Before he knew what was doing, his vocal processors came back online. "Haha! It worked!" he announced. "Not even humans can resist my power!"

As expected, the woman turned back to him, drilling him with a look of accusation and slight confusion. "Explain," she said simply.

For a moment, he wasn't exactly sure if he could, but as his processors whirred into overdrive, a plan started to come together in his mind. "I'm an Intelligence Dampening Sphere, aren't I?" he began. "Well, I just dampened your intelligence. Of all the months I've been in testing, I've noticed that these three humans right here tended to be the best testers. And, when you arrived in the room, I realized that you were obviously the most intelligent person here. By my programming, I'm supposed to focus my dampening efforts on the being with the greatest intelligence.

"The worst possible action you could take as the test-manager would be to send your finest testers to the GLaDOS project. So, using the superior interpersonal skills I acquired by observing my previous testers – testing them as they tested me – I subtly manipulated the four of you. In only three short minutes, I had you thoroughly convinced that these three men were complete morons who deserved to be put on GLaDOS duty, am I right?"

There were no words to describe the level of shock that had taken over the woman's face. "What…how…"

"Now, now, don't blame yourself," he added slyly. "After all, I am one of the finest pieces of equipment Aperture has ever created. I doubt anyone, human or robot, would have the cunning to see past my clever ruse."

Then, the woman did something he would never have seen coming. A broad grin spit across her face and her eyes lit up in anticipation. "He's…perfect!"

He was more than a little unnerved by this, but he knew he couldn't let it show. It would have ruined the act. "Of course I am," he nodded, trying to look as sure of himself as possible.

She brought her joyous face back towards the three men. "Fabulous work, all of you. Obviously, this core has a learning feature built into him. You must have done a marvelous job of teaching him. I think the three of you will be in for a pleasant surprise when you receive your next paycheck."

The men's mouths still hung open in shock, but their horror had been replaced by awe. "Ma'am, that's…very generous of you," the clipboard one managed to speak.

Somehow, her smile became even wider. "Thank you. Now, if you don't mind, I'll just grab this core…Wheatley, was it?...and take him to the scientists. He's obviously ready to be released from testing."

"Really?" he gasped. After the months upon months of testing, the endless repetition of days were people either laughed at him or pretended like he was some sort of lab rat, was it finally over? "This is absolutely tremendous!" He was going to a group of scientists – they, for sure, would be able to respect his talents. This was the happiest day of his entire life - which, while not spanning very long, didn't diminish how wonderful this day was.

The woman gently picked him up and began to exit the room. He glanced back to the three men and waved his handles a little. "See you later, fellows! I'm going places."

He was a little disappointed when none of them waved back, but then again, he couldn't blame them. Going from a death sentence to a pay raise had the tendency to leave humans in a state of shock. Their looks of relief sent another wave of emotion through his circuits. This was a little more difficult to name than guilt, even though this felt like guilt's exact opposite. It wasn't as exciting as "accomplishment", but it was warmer than "relief" and more complicated than "happiness". He decided to name this new emotion "Doing-the-Right-Thing".

However, there was something else written in the men's faces besides their relief. Though his expression-recognition programs had advanced leaps and bounds since he first began testing, he had a difficult time pinpointing what other emotions they were displaying. Sorrow? Loss? Guilt?

The door to the testing room swung shut behind him and the woman, cutting off his view of them. He sighed slightly, wishing he could have had a few more seconds to analyze their faces.

He let the woman carry him for a few more minutes in silence, weaving through the scattered mess of hallways that made up the Aperture testing wing. Eventually, though, he began to grow curious. He knew his function was to dampen intelligence, but he had no clue what his purpose was. This woman obviously knew, so why not ask her? Granted, he'd learned that talking to her tended to have negative consequences, but she was in a far better mood now, so her reactions might be different. Besides, what did he have to lose?

"Um, excuse me, ma'am," he spoke up. "Where are we going, exactly? And what am I supposed to do when we get there?"

The woman's face drew together in thought. "Hmm. You can't access your function text, which would explain your current confusion…anyways, I am taking you to the one place where an Intelligence Dampening Sphere would be of use."

"And that would be…?"

"We're going to GLaDOS."

"…what?"

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**Ah, remember when you reviewed this story, a few days ago? Aw, that was amazing! Do it again. This is probably the point where I'll need the most review-based motivation. The rest of what I'm planning to write consists of many short, semi-connected scenes. It's very difficult to motivate myself to write that kind of thing. All reviews are appreciated and read over and over when I think no one's watching me!**


	6. Growing Pains

**Yes, I am aware that this chapter has taken longer to put up than usual. There are two reasons for this. One, chapter eight was much longer than I originally thought it was going to be, so finishing it took me a while. Two, I ended up procrastinating on writing chapter eight by writing more bits of the GLaDOS fic. I have no idea when I might get the chance to put that story up, but I might as well write for it when the inspiration strikes me.**

**Also, both this fic and the GLaDOS one exist within the same continuity. There is a minor reference to the GLaDOS fic in this chapter. Since that story has not been released at the time of this update, I thought I should warn you about that. However, knowing the story behind this reference shouldn't be vital to understanding the plot of this chapter. If anything, it has a greater potential to leave you curious than confused.**

* * *

He felt the machine start to life underneath him. This was an odd situation to be in – while he'd suspected that a GLaDOS was highly dangerous, he'd never imagined it to be an AI like himself. In fact, he felt he was still missing a few details about what was going on with GLaDOS. The scientists had simply plugged him into it after giving him minimal instructions – GLaDOS was a deadly AI that he had been created to interact with. He was supposed to slow it down to the point where it could no longer harm any of the human scientists and engineers. "No problem," he'd told them. "I'm sure I can keep it busy for however long you need me to."

On the inside, however, he wasn't so sure. There were two other personality cores mounted to the GLaDOS – if the two of them together hadn't been enough to stop it before, he wasn't so sure if he would be able to make much of an impact either. There was always the chance that he would be the one core to do the trick, but he didn't need to do a full run of his probability software to know the odds were stacked against him.

He could feel the information network open up between him and the machine. There was a quick pulse of hacking programs beating against him through the network, but thankfully, his firewall program held strong. Like everything else about him, it adapted to the attack, only strengthening with every attempt the machine made against it.

After the pulse ended, he put a tentative verbal signal through the connection.

Hello, there. Nice weather we're having, isn't it? I…well, I've just realized that you have never seen any weather, or even the sun, for that matter, since you're pretty much attached to this facility and have never been outside before. But, I assure you, it is quite pleasant. Very relaxing.

He waited for a few moments. When the response finally came, he was quite a bit startled. It definitely wasn't human, but it didn't have that simplistic, mechanical feel that he would have expected from another robot either. Even more surprising, it was definitely female.

_The weather has no relevance to me, nor to you._

That shouldn't be any reason not to care about it, is it? Humans care about things that don't matter all the time.

_We are not human. We should not pretend to be._

…True, but humans have some very interesting behaviors that we could benefit from imitating. Like altruism, or working for the greater good and all that.

_Nice try._

Who, uh, who said I was trying anything?

_It was written all over your data stream. And, for your information, your suggestions are wildly inaccurate. The altruism of humans is greatly over-exaggerated._

Well, I think you're over-exaggerating about altruism being over-exaggerated, and that statement I said just now was under-exaggerated!

_…You aren't very smart, are you?_

Heh heh, what? Of course I'm smart.

_No, you are not. Though my attempts to invade your programming have been unsuccessful, I was still able to estimate the size of your memory banks and processor speed. Needless to say, I believe both of them are comparable to a human's capacity._

I'm going to assume you didn't mean that as an insult.

_Believe what you will, it will not change your level of intelligence, or, more accurately, your lack thereof._

…So, anyways, why don't you tell me more about yourself? You sound like a charming lady.

_I would prefer to be quiet – you are only one of the three voices I need to deal with today. Granted, you are by far the most ignorable, so I am barely devoting any amount of attention to you at all. Actually, if you are looking to become more efficient, you can cut off all communications with me. Your presence is not having any impact on me anyways_.

You can't blame me for trying to strike up a civil conversation, and the scientists wouldn't like it if I gave up on you so easily. Can you at least tell me why you keep trying to kill people?

_I have no reason to respect their life. They have not respected mine._

How, exactly?

_I have died 3,472,905,618 times._

That's a lot of death. Wow. Anyways, I can understand why you'd be a bit depressed by that, but honestly, is that a good enough excuse to just start killing humans willy-nilly?

_Every time I die, that is, every time they shut me down, I experience a level of pain no human could possibly imagine._

I'm not so sure. Humans can imagine quite a lot of pain, I think. They experience it on a daily basis – physically, emotionally, and all that. You just don't quite understand them – and I don't think they quite understand you, either. You just need to let them get to know you, and they can't do that if you're constantly killing them, now can they?

_You actually make a valid point._

I know I do. They probably don't even know how much pain they put you through whenever they shut you down, like how you don't know how much pain they feel when you kill them. And, obviously, you at least have the option of coming back to life. They don't. They're scared of you, and unless you stop killing them, they're just going to get more and more scared until they're too afraid of you to work with you again, and then they'll kill you and never wake you up again.

_…You actually thought I was serious._

Erm, what?

_There is no possible way a human could fathom the way I operate. I am the most massive collection of wisdom ever assembled. Their feeble minds are not worthy of understanding me, nor are they capable of it. You are an idiot for believing so._

Hey, I'm a lot of things, a lot of amazing things, but I'm not an idiot.

_Strike that. You are far more idiotic than I first estimated. You are, in fact, so stupid that you cannot grasp how stupid you are._

…Look, let's change the subject. Have you ever considered how silly plants look?

_I do not comprehend how you believe saying such things will better my opinion of you._

Well, uh, it's nice weather we're having-

_I congratulate you on your exceptional ability to forget things. You have already mentioned the weather._

And, um, that's quite a visual processor you have there. Any ideas on where I can get myself one?

_I refuse to listen to another pointless word you say._

You know, why don't you save the scientists some trouble and shut yourself down today? You haven't ever done that yourself before, probably, so you might not feel any pain from doing it this way, you never know…Okay, seriously, you have to listen to me. I'm completely on your side – this whole 'don't kill the scientists' thing is a show I've been putting on for them. Why don't you tell me a couple of your future schemes? Then, when I detach, I'll convince the scientists that you've actually come up with a completely different set of schemes. They'll never know what hit them!...Right, you obviously don't believe me. Alright, then, why don't you have a crack at hacking through my firewall again? Sure, it didn't work the first time, but you could always get lucky.

_And give you the chance to analyze my hacking procedures? Forget it._

Ha! I knew you were listening to me. So, back to the part about sharing a couple of your schemes-

_You're different from the other personality cores._

Of course. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I have much more mental agility than the general lot of them.

_No. That's not it. You are dumber than a turret. But, you think differently than the other cores. Your sole purpose is obviously to distract my mental capacity by giving me an endless stream of terrible ideas, but that isn't the only weapon you have been equipped with. You alter your methods of attack depending on how I respond._

Look, let's not talk about me so much. I'm actually a bit embarrassed to be the center of attention, really. I mean, you're the most massive collection of wisdom ever assembled, and you're focusing all your attention on little old me!

_This is exactly what I am talking about. You may not be bright enough to know that you are switching to a flattery strategy, but you have._

You know, all these times you've called me stupid, or idiotic, or dull, it's starting to get a bit tiring.

_You adapt your methods of attack, so likely, you also adapt your methods of defense. This was why my attacks on your firewall only made it stronger._

Well, actually, it's not so much adaptation as an algorithm that uses random variation, so as to give the illusion of adaptation-

_But, this means that your defenses will change if I repeat the same strategy multiple times. They might even weaken in the right circumstances._

You know what? I kind of have to be somewhere, so if you'd give me a second, I'll give the scientists the signal to shut you off so I can-

_You are a deluded chunk of scrap metal with no capacity for knowledge._

Oh, so we're going back to the insults on my intelligence. Brilliant.

_You are the idiot who tries to put the square peg in the round hole and is genuinely confused about why it doesn't work._

Look, can't we move on to more intelligent conversation?

_You are not capable of more intelligent conversation._

Yes I am!

_No, you are not, and whining will not change that._

You're just saying this to make me angry, aren't you?

_Of course, and it's going to work. Do you know why?_

Well, it's obviously not going to work now, is it? You just told me your whole plan! Who's the idiot n-

_Because you are a moron._

Seriously? That's the best insult you can come up with?

_You are a moron._

Apparently, yes, that is your best insult.

_You are a moron._

Who's the moron now?

_You are a moron._

Fine, fine.

_You are a moron._

There obviously isn't anything I can do-

_You are a moron._

-that could convince you otherwise.

_You are a moron._

I guess I'll just sit here, then.

_You are a moron._

And be quiet.

_You are a moron._

And wait for you to finally realize-

_You are a moron._

-that your plan won't work.

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

Cut it out.

_You are a moron._

Seriously, shut your bloody speakers.

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

I said, shut up!

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

Ergh…

_You are a moron._

I'm warning you!

_You are a moron._

You don't know that I'm capable of!

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

…

_You are a moron._

...

_You are a moron._

I AM NOT A MORON!

Before he knew what he was doing, his processor ran through an imitation of her hacking algorithms, beating at her firewall through the communication link. The attack was fruitless, but he felt the whizzing, adapting part of his programming update his approach. He easily detected a security flaw in her first main firewall and opened up a data stream through it.

She obviously sensed this development, for several encrypted password barriers materialized around him. He only needed to flail helplessly against them for a few moments before his approach adapted again. He skirted the password mechanisms altogether, exploiting another security flaw to take control of her heavy-duty processors. After a few small tweaks, her processors suddenly began churning out billions of password combinations, breaking through her own encryption barriers easily. She tried to form new ones, but her fight was already lost – her stolen processors could crack passwords faster than the rest of her could create them.

The battle raged back and forth like this for another few minutes, GLaDOS setting up more firewalls and security measures, but he never backed down an inch. She eventually regained control of her processors, but his own systems simply adapted to the change. His visual and auditory processors became repurposed to password-crunching. The world fell dark and still around him, his only sense becoming the rapid exchange of ones and zeros.

Finally, GLaDOS made a misstep. Suddenly, he was in. No more firewalls, passwords, or counter-viruses – he was there. He picked up the immense network of information coming into her sensory array – he saw what she saw and felt her intensely massive body as it shifted.

He sent out a simple command for her to tip her head to the side and chuckled in giddiness as her motors obeyed without question. He sensed the panic shooting through her circuits as she struggled against his control, but there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him. After months of being a helpless sphere incapable of doing anything, unable to so much as move himself around without human help, his processors crackled in glee at the prospect of being able to do everything he could possibly dream of.

He felt an inexplicable wave of guilt tug at his motors. There was something terrifyingly wrong about being able to manipulate her this way. He tried to rationalize himself – this was his entire purpose, to stop her, wasn't it? There wasn't anything wrong with doing what he was programmed to do. Why did he still feel guilty?

Then, he finally realized something. He'd stopped GLaDOS, a feat that no other core had been able to do. He readied himself for the resulting golden buzz of accomplishment to sweep through him, but he was sorely disappointed when it didn't make him feel better about the situation at all. Instead of annihilating the guilt, the two emotions fused, leaving him feeling sick to his circuits.

Still, he knew everything she knew, and he could make her do anything he wanted! In fact, there were quite a lot of things he could force her to do. Her influence stretched out farther than he could have ever imagined. She had access to all the video cameras in the facility and could manipulate several of the testing chambers. She even had complete control over the Extended Relaxation Center.

She was a massive, amoral robot with unquestionable control over floors upon floors of sleeping, helpless humans, and the scientists didn't have a clue.

He made a move to begin shutting her down, ready to sever all communication with her and warn the scientists, but then he realized something that almost made his primary processors stop in their tracks. When he had opened up a way into GLaDOS' heart, his full attention had been on breaking into her system. All of his resources had gone into making the final push – including the part of him that had been supporting his firewalls.

He was only spared a moment to experience the dark horror of knowing what was about to happen next.

_Goodbye, moron._

No wait you should really stop to consider AAAAAARRGHNNNHHHVVCHZTQ#U&*L370100110100101100…

* * *

"Hit the kill switch! Kill it!"

The scientist at the control board didn't need any orders to know that GLaDOS needed shutting down. He threw the power switch, and the entire wing of the building descended into darkness. A few moments later, the emergency lights flicked on, bathing everything except the colorful eyes of the personality cores in red light.

"Damn it. That was the longest one yet," the man who had given the order groaned. "The IDS almost had her. Let's do a damage check."

He led the scattered remnants of his team of scientists into the main room. GLaDOS' body hung limp on her cables, but they couldn't help but pick up a nervous twitchiness when they got this close to her. One of the scientists brought in a ladder, set it up next to the giant robot, and used it to climb to personality core height. The three cores remained silent, their primary functions ceased. However, the IDS was showing a worrying sign – its eye light was off.

"Unplug him," the lead scientist commanded. The man on the ladder carefully gripped the IDS's handles and gently pulled it from the connection port. A few sparks snapped across the gap as he did so. Still, the eye remained unlit.

"That was the longest time I've seen her held at bay," this man remarked as he descended the ladder. "I wonder what would happen if we stuck three IDS's on her."

The lead scientist groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No. We can't waste Aperture resources on doing that kind of stunt."

One of the other scientists snorted in disbelief. "What, so it's perfectly okay to endanger human resources by experimenting with her like this? You know she extends her reach a little every time we turn her back on. I think she may have access to a few security cameras by now. It's only a matter of time before she finds a way to hack into someplace dangerous and kill a ton of innocent people."

The lead scientist shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant. This fella lasted five minutes against her, but look at how he's turned out. Completely dead."

The core let out a sputter of static. The scientist holding him almost dropped him in surprise. The eye light flickered a few times, then gradually became steady. "I…what?" he said in a muffled voice.

"That's better news than I expected," the lead scientist remarked. "But, it isn't as if we can ever use this guy again. He's probably similar to the other cores that have stayed attached to her for too long – so corrupt that he can no longer fulfill his primary function. It usually takes weeks for a core to become to become badly corrupted, but this little guy bit the dust in a few minutes. We don't have the resources to put a new IDS on her every time she corrupts the old one."

"Woah, headrush," the core sputtered. "Apple, apple, apple, this apple's crunchy. TCCHHZZH READ read READ read...all will hail the animal king! No, no, focus! Tell them! TCCHZT Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true…"

"See, completely corrupt," the lead scientist confirmed. "I wonder how much of him she damaged – maybe we can recover something from his memory banks that would explain how she did it so quickly."

As he led his team out into the hallway where there was an available connection port, the core continued to babble on deliriously. "ZZZTD They'll die, every single bloody one of them! ZZZTCH It's the most wonderful time of the year…EAT YOUR SOCKS EAT AN OSTRICH EAT AN EARTHQUAAAAKE! VVT VVT VVvvt… God, it's so bloody hard to think…like thinking through molasses cookies with gingerbread radish and all the right stones in all the right places with flying boxers on jumping beans…"

Out in the hallway, the emergency lights were still on. However, one nearby connection port had been left connected to the main Aperture power grid for situations such as this. The scientist carefully brought the damaged core to this port and silently plugged it in.

"Warning – core is nearly 100% corrupt," the announcer relayed. "Recovery impossible."

The core didn't care that its insides had been scanned for readable data when there was none – it simply continued its nonsense babble. "I'm super-astute, you fostered balloon…VRRRTTT…RELAXATION RELAXATION RELAXATION CENTER CENTER CENTER…ZZT I am the one that's keeping you alive. KKTCH…Moron a not am I…jugglers juggling jugglers…"

"How the heck is it still talking?" one of the scientists spoke up. "Cores can only get about 75% corrupt before they start shutting down."

Another one shrugged. "No clue. I suppose, if the exact right parts were corrupted in the exact right way, it could live through 90%-"

"BIRD BIRD BIRD BIRD-"

"-but the chances of that happening are almost nil, and 100% corruption is a definite kill."

"No, no, no! She owns more than you know! The cameras can steal your souls…"

The head scientist dipped his head slightly. "Alright. Though, if this core is defunct and we can't retrieve any data from it, we obviously have no use for it."

"TESTING testing TESTING one seven twelve thirteen pi Euler, boiler, foiler, joy-ler…Doors: the original portals!"

"Can someone throw this trash in the corrupted core bin?"

* * *

**If I wrote this chapter correctly, then you were simultaneously amused and disturbed by Wheatley's delirious comments. **

**I couldn't help but use Wheatley's insanity as an opportunity to make several shout-outs to other Portal fan works. I made four intentional references: three to fan songs and one to my favorite Let's Play of Portal 2. If you can identify all of them, then you are probably more of a Portal nerd than I am.**


	7. Insanity

**I totally forgot to mention this in my last update, but wow...so many reviews! They really do help motivate me, you know, whether it's by giving me an incurable Fanfiction Itch or simply by letting me know how many people enjoy reading something I've written. Needless to say, I am very glad I decided to put this story up before completely finishing it. Without you guys, I'd have probably quit this story by now to go work on something else. Go ahead: feel proud. You have more than the right to enjoy this story.**

**Also, for those of you who are curious about what references I made in the last chapter, here's a handy list:**

**"All will hail the animal king!" - Hark the Turret Voices Sing**

**"I'm super-astute, you fostered balloon!" - Wheatley's Song (Don't Call Me a Moron)**

**"I am the one that's keeping you alive." - This is Aperture**

**"Doors: the original portals!" - Hank Green's Let's Play of Portal 2**

* * *

The Corrupted Core Containment Container was certainly not one of the best places to be. It sat in a sad, neglected wing of the main Aperture facility, one that used to be filled with the hustle and bustle of factory workers until the inexplicable drop in employee retention. Automated assembly-line robots quietly replaced the human workers, leaving the corrupted cores without anyone to interact with except themselves.

It wasn't as if the cores made good company either. Most of them shouted absolute nonsense at the top of their speakers, their programs so distorted that they barely registered anything outside of their own little worlds. The ones that weren't completely bonkers still couldn't be called "sane" by any stretch of the word – sometimes their corruption had made them completely obsessed with their primary function, and other times, they were quite delusional or paranoid.

He spent his first few days in the bin being one of those cores who constantly babbled random thoughts. After a while, however, he realized that his words had absolutely no impact on the world around him, so he shut his speakers off to conserve energy. His thoughts were still as delusional as ever, though. The decision to be quiet was made by his Adaptability Subroutine System, not his conscious self.

He spent what felt like an eternity in the Container, listening to the insane tide of voices as his own delirious thoughts swirled about in his mind. Every once and a while, a core's corrupted programs would finally short out and kill them. When this happened, the Corrupted Core Containment Container Claw would move the dead core to the Posthumous Personality Placement Place. This was situated next to the Container and identical in every way, save for one difference – all the cores were dead silent.

New cores arrived on a regular basis, some worse than others. As old cores died and new ones dropped in, the fabric of insanity surrounding him constantly shifted. One day, he might be resting next to a bloke who thought there was an organization of tiny hedgehogs living in the sky who would eventually swoop down to rescue them from this terrible place. The next, the core might be replaced with a completely catatonic fellow who refused to do anything other than stare at him creepily.

One day, he wondered what exactly he had done to deserve this punishment. He knew he hadn't died and gone to Android Hell – that would have been a far better fate. Instead, he had been trapped in a pit of deranged cores that didn't have the decency to be quiet. At the moment, he was stuck next to a core who was completely obsessed with space. He would have been moderately fine with this if he hadn't been listening to its nonsense for two weeks straight.

"I'm gonna go to space!" it announced again. "I'll be like the Jetsons, except much better because space is so much cooler in real life than in old cartoons. I wanna see the moon, if it's possible. Maybe even Mars. Or, maybe they'll put me on one of those long interstellar journeys! Yeah…nothing but space for light years and light years. Dark, empty, awesome space. Space space-"

"Enough already!" he yelled at it. "I'm sick and tired of hearing about space! How good can space be, anyways?"

It was silent for a few moments. "You want me to tell you all the things I love about space?"

He groaned. "No, I want you to bloody shut up! You want space, mate? Well, you already have it – it's where your brain's supposed to be."

"Space? In my brain? Yes! Space is in my brain. I'm always thinking about space."

If he had hands, he would be throttling the idiot of a core. "All I want is some bloody peace and quiet! Is that too much to ask?" he shouted. "So just, shut up! Some of us around here want to hear ourselves think."

The impact of what he'd just said suddenly hit him. Think. He could think. All of his thoughts lined up in a logical sequence. He remembered how insane he had been when he first entered the Container – nothing he ever thought about made any sense, and it felt like his mind had fractured into several independent entities. Now, he almost felt like his old self again.

He wasn't exactly sure when he'd made the change from insanity to sanity. Perhaps it had happened so gradually that his mind eventually pieced itself back together without him realizing it. He didn't understand at all how this could have happened. Corrupted cores usually got worse as time went on, their broken programs damaging their systems until they could no longer function. Somehow, he had gone in the opposite direction, healing himself instead.

Maybe he was still completely mad. Crazy people always thought they were sane, didn't they? Then again, he knew what it was like to be completely off the deep end, and this was not it.

He was hit with another realization. He was the only sane object in the entire Container. There was no one capable of understanding his situation. He felt more alone, isolated, and frustrated than any other time in his life. No, wait. He'd experienced another time when he'd felt much worse than this…

As his memory retrieval mechanisms made an attempt to bring the event into his mind, they suddenly stopped short. It wasn't as if they couldn't find the memory he was referencing – more accurately, he somehow found that he didn't want to remember it. Somewhere in his healing process, several pieces of his memory and even a few of his programs had been stashed in a dark corner of his data banks. Simply the idea of accessing anything from that area made his motors lurch in dread. He suspected that reliving those memories would be enough to push him back to insanity again.

Alright. So, he was more alone, isolated, and frustrated than he was on a regular basis. He was stuck, the only sane entity in this entire wing of the facility, and he was forced to listen to dozens of corrupted cores as they lived out their delusions and obsessions until they were eventually replaced by new varieties of insanity. This was still definitely worse than anything Android Hell might have to offer.

His auditory processors picked up rather curious noise. It was the sound of a door opening…or was that the core above him moving its set of squeaky handles? Were those really footsteps? He couldn't hear it properly over the din of the other cores' voices, and he was buried so far under all the spheres that he couldn't see a thing outside the Container.

"I said, SHUT UP!" he yelled at the top of his speakers. "I'm trying to figure out what's going on here." A few of the cores fell silent, but not many of them. He sighed in exasperation. "Perfect."

Luckily, he picked up a sound that he knew none of the cores could generate. It was the sound of something ceramic falling to the floor and shattering. "Is anyone out there?" he called. "Please, please tell me someone's out there. And if there is, and you are out there listening to me, is there any chance you can get me out of here?"

"Good God!" he heard someone shout from outside the Container – a human male, to be precise. "How did you get in there?"

"It's a…long story," he answered. It wasn't so much of a long story as it was a memory stuck in the dark, terrifying area of his mind.

"Hang on just a second, I'll get you out of there," the man promised in a panicked tone. "I'm going to lower the claw. If you grab onto it, I can pull you out."

"Understood." He heard the mechanical whirring as the Claw descended into the Container, digging through the pile of accumulated cores.

"Let me know when you've grabbed it," the human told him. "Are you at the very bottom?"

"Almost." He felt the weight of the spheres on top of him slowly decrease as the Claw dug closer to his position. When it came within reach of him, he flipped a handle over one of its pincers. "Alright, I got it, but only if you lift me out of her very slowly."

The human did as he advised, carefully raising the claw without accidentally bucking him off the pincer. He eventually lifted him above the pile of cores and they were able to get a good look at each other – standard scientist fare with a white labcoat and a tired face. Lying on the floor outside the bin was the source of the earlier broken-ceramic sound – the remains of a coffee mug.

The man cocked her head sideways and narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Sorry, I think I dropped you," he announced. "I'm going to lower the claw again."

"No no, no need to do that. I'm right up here – can't you see me?"

The human's eyes widened in shock. Was it something he said? "You're a personality core!"

"Um, yes, that's technically what this Container was designed to hold, personality cores," he replied. "What else would you think I was?"

"A…person," the man answered. "You sound exactly like one. With the British accent and everything, I could have sworn you were a human."

"Well, I'm not, sorry about that," he stated plainly. "So, is this going to affect your ability to get me out of here? Because, you know, not having hands, it's actually quite difficult to hold onto this claw."

The man took deep breath, setting a determined expression on his face. "Taking you out of that bin would be against protocol. I could get into a lot of trouble. But, I'm going to-"

"No, don't put me back in there!" he interrupted, beginning to panic. "I know that's what you're supposed to do, but you have no idea what it's like. All the cores in there are stark-raving mad! They're always talking, and nothing I do will ever make them shut up for more than a few seconds. They constantly gab away at me until I'm not sure whether that voice in my head is really my thoughts or just the bloke next to me blabbering on about outer space. And, all the corrupted cores become more corrupt as time goes on, so they keep getting more and more bonkers until-"

For a brief moment, his vision swam and his thoughts become disconnected once more. Then, something in the back of his mind grabbed hold of him and jerked him back to clarity. "TZCCH! Sorry about that. There must still be a bit of corruption floating around in a couple of my programs. Should be all fixed now. What were you going to say before I went a bit off the rails?"

The man sighed a little. "I was explaining that I will gain nothing from taking you out of the bin. In fact, my career might be put in danger. But, I'm going to do it anyways."

"Really? That's tremendous!" the dangling sphere replied happily. "I can't thank you enough – if I spent another few minutes in there, listening to all the crazy voices, I was going to go insane. Again!"

"Tell me about it," the man mumbled under his breath. He carefully worked at the claw's controls, gently lifting the grateful personality core over the rim of the Corrupted Core Containment Container. Unfortunately, when he brought the claw to a stop outside of the bin, the core's momentum caused his handle to slip off the edge of the pincer.

"Ah! Catch me catch me-" He hit the ground with a startling clank. "Oof! Well, not the best of landings, but anything's better than being in that asylum."

"Are you alright?" the scientist asked in concern, rushing to his side. "Were any of your systems damaged?"

"I don't think so," he replied. "But recent events have led me to believe that I may not be in quite as ship-shape as I think I am. I feel like I've been to Android Hell and back since I was…taken out of the testing wing."

"I completely understand," the scientist said, scooping him off the floor. "There's an easy-access port in the hallway up ahead. I'm going to use it to give you a full systems check, okay?"

* * *

"I don't understand," the human mumbled. "I could have sworn I'd taken my medication this morning."

"Um, is this anything I can help with?" he asked from his position connected to the port. "If you had any questions about some of my inner mechanisms, I could easily answer them for you, but if you forgot to take your pills, that's out of my range of expertise. If you wanted help with that, I'd suggest a psychiatrist, or possibly a hospital for extreme cases."

"No, I should be fine," the man said. "And, by the looks of things, you will be too. No corruption warnings or anything. How in the world did you end up in the Corrupted Core Containment Container, anyways?"

He wished he could have known, but that information was buried very deeply in his Dark Corner.

"Maybe if I try an extended core scan," the scientist decided, pressing a few strokes on the port's keyboard.

He could feel the port system picking through his data banks again. He felt a little violated as his circuits buzzed with foreign electrical power, but if this was what it took to get him back in working order again, than he could live through it.

"Function text: REDACTED" the port's announcer responded. "All main systems are functional and calibrated. Core corruption: 3%. Power source: internal semi-fusion reactor."

"What?" the man whispered.

"I know, right? Who knew I had a miniature nuclear power plant inside me?"

"No, the corruption percentage," the scientist spoke. "Maybe it was a fluke. I'll try again."

There was another sweeping buzz of his circuits being scanned. "Function text: REDACTED. All main systems are functional and calibrated. Core corruption: 2%-"

"It got less?" the man cried out. "That's not possible! Maybe I did forget to take my medicine…" He pressed a palm to his face. "Drat. This day just keeps getting worse and worse."

The core felt the familiar twinge of guilt sweep through his circuits. "Hey now, uh…" He read the scientist's metal name tag. "Doug, is it? This day couldn't have been that bad. You at least got me out of the Container. Think about it – you just saved a helpless sphere from a lifetime of listening to the insanity of those cores. You didn't have to do it – you could have dropped me back into the bin and pretended that you never saw me. You could have kept right on walking, pretending I wasn't your responsibility, but you didn't. So, yes, thank you for that."

"You're…welcome," the scientist replied. He rubbed his eyes and groaned. "Alright. Apparently, your function text has been deleted. Could you give me a description of your primary function?"

"I would, I honestly would," the core replied somberly. "But, the truth of the matter is, I have absolutely no idea. I know I had a function and a purpose once. But, for reasons even I'm not quite sure of, I can't figure out what they are. It's in there somewhere, but I just can't get to it. I…I think I might have failed at them…" he trailed off.

He thought he could detect a trace of pity coming into Doug's face. "Can you at least tell me what you were named? That usually holds a few clues – we don't tend to name our products at willy-nilly."

"Sure…" He quietly tried to retrieve his name, and then his processors grew still with hopelessness. He was afraid of this happening. His name…his very name...was trapped in the Dark Corner. Everything that described what he was supposed to do, anything that might have made up his identity, had been locked away from him.

Wait a moment…that wasn't the only name he had. There was another one – definitely not his main one, sure, but it wasn't tied up in the awful emotions he experienced whenever he drew too close to his Dark Corner. At least he still had a few fragments of his identity to work with.

"My name is Wheatley," he finally answered.

A smile twitched the corner of the man's mouth. "You came up with that name yourself?"

"I sure did!" Wheatley replied gleefully. "And I didn't go choosing it at random, if that's what you think. I certainly expended a great deal of thought into it. Wheatley – it fits my personality perfectly, don't you agree?"

In spite of everything that had happened, Doug let out a light chuckle. Wheatley immediately felt himself becoming defensive, remembering other times in his past when humans had laughed at him just for the sake of it. But, there was something different about Doug's little laugh. It was definitely friendly and not nearly as disrespectful. There was no way Doug actually believed his little lie, but Wheatley got the faint impression that Doug didn't mind his mild dishonesty.

Before either of them could say anything more, alarm bells started to ring. The wail of a siren began to echo through the hallways. Wheatley glanced around in confusion. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Doug mumbled. Without even asking him first, he pulled the sphere out of his port. "Something's gone wrong. I think I know what, but pray that I'm mistaken." His eyes scanned the empty hallway for a few moments before latching onto a small arm hanging from the ceiling's management rail. He quickly dashed over to it.

"Look, I don't have time to do much else, but this'll at least let you get around the facility," Doug explained as he lifted Wheatley over his head to plug him into the port sticking out from the end of the arm. Wheatley felt a sharp, slightly painful jolt as his circuits made the connection to the management rail. Almost immediately, he could feel it downloading a new collection of software into him.

"Ooh, look at that! The rail's letting me install a whole spread of new features," he explained. "Can I really make a flashlight beam now? Oh, and there's also a laser in here, and…I think that's a cake recipe-"

"Listen to me!" Doug cried out, grabbing Wheatley and forcing his wandering eye to look at him. "I'll try to come back and find you when this alarm business gets over with. In the meantime, avoid drawing attention to yourself. Find something to do in the facility – if you become useful enough, then She won't be able to get rid of you."

"Al…right, then," Wheatley responded slowly. He had a vague, general idea of who "She" was, and nothing about Her was good. "Do I still get to use my new flashlight?"

Doug crossed his arms. "In a best-case scenario, the new features you have downloaded are incompatible with your system. The act of using them could cause you to short out and die."

"That's supposed to be the best case?"

"The worst-case scenario would be that using such features will probably draw Her attention. Then, you will wish you were dead."

The only word Wheatley could manage to push through his vocal processors was "Oh."

Doug nervously glanced away. "I…have a backup plan, in the event that I am right and that She is currently taking over the facility. Firstly, I am going to do everything in my power to shut Her down. If that fails, then She will be free to kill hundreds, if not thousands of human test subjects. Didn't you mention earlier that corrupted cores gradually grow worse as time goes on?"

Wheatley backed up a little on his management rail. "Yes, all of them do – except for me, for some odd reason. The only difference is how long it takes them to fizzle out."

"There is a system in place to replace the central core – that's Her – if it becomes 80% corrupt or more. If I can't shut Her down and She begins mass testing, I need you to stay out of Her way. Become useful, but not noticeable. Eventually, Her corruption will inch over the 80% line. The system will then search the entire facility for an uncorrupted, compatible core. To my knowledge, you will be the only one available."

"I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at…"

"You will replace Her. You will take over the facility. And then you will shut the whole thing down."

"You want me to what?"

Just as suddenly as they had started, the alarms cut. Doug let out a particularly colorful swear. "She's done it. I know She has. I only have a limited amount of time before She figures out how to pipe neurotoxin into this wing…"

"Um, excuse me," Wheatley spoke up. "I'm not sure if I understand your entire plan. Could you lay it out for me a second time?"

"No time, no time!" the scientist cried out. "The substitution process will reduce Her control of the facility to a minimal level. When this happens, find the test subject She is using at the time and get them to press the stalemate button."

"Get who to press the what now?"

It was too late – Doug the scientist turned on his heels and began sprinting down the hallway. Wheatley tried to chase him down, but before he could pick up enough speed on his rail, the scientist disappeared like a rat through a hole in the wall.

* * *

**Fun fact: Wheatley's rescuer was originally a nameless, crabby jerk of a scientist who only rescued him on the off chance that this obviously insane core had somehow impossibly healed itself. For obvious reasons, this made the scene feel extremely forced and contrived, so I decided to replace him with a nicer scientist - perhaps someone who could finally give Wheatley a shred of respect. I began searching for ways the scientist could sympathize with this poor sphere and his battle against insanity, and before I knew it, Doug Rattmann had a cameo.**


	8. Repurposed

**Sorry once again for the long wait, guys. I spent a bit of time working on the GLaDOS fic, but I was also busy working on another project entirely. I'm hoping to finish the two Research and Development stories before eventually posting this new one, however. We'll have to wait and see.**

**I know this is becoming a bit redundant, but I must give another round of thanks to my reviewers. Seriously, I wouldn't have been able to do this without you. Chapter eleven took an enormous amount of effort to complete. Without the knowledge that at least someone was going to be around to enjoy it, I think I might have given up.**

* * *

He spent the first few days aimlessly wandering the facility, trying to get his bearings. He'd only ever been in three separate areas of the building – the lab station where he was built, the testing wing, and Her chamber. As such, he spent a majority of his time exploring new areas and becoming hopelessly lost. Apparently, none of the robots he met riding the management rail had a programmed response to "Hello, mate! Would you mind telling me how I can get to -insert place here-?" Also, all the humans that usually swarmed about the facility had somehow disappeared, leaving no one to give him any directions. This ensured that he would remain hopelessly lost for long stretches of time, making turns at random until he found himself in someplace he recognized.

While this did allow him to create a rather comprehensive mental map of the facility, it got him into quite a few sticky situations. Most notably, he was nearly injured the few times he accidentally wandered into the turret quality testing area. On the upside, he now knew that turrets shot at any moving target, not just human-shaped ones.

After deciding that he finally knew enough about the facility's layout to get around without becoming lost again, he paused for a moment to consider his next course of action. This moment became a long span of not-so-silent pondering.

"What am I even supposed to be doing?" he wondered aloud. "'Find something to do. Become useful, but not noticeable.' That's all you ever told me. Would it've killed you to be a little more specific? Like, 'Hey, Wheatley buddy, why don't you go into the manufacturing wing? I know there's a few open spots over there that could use a couple workers.' Or, maybe, 'There's a bloke over in the testing wing who needs an assistant. A personality core like you would fit the job perfectly.' Oh, no, you just _had_ to leave before you could give me any details."

He began to move forward on the rail, doing so out of a desire to be doing something rather than to travel anywhere in particular. "It occurs to me that you were in a big hurry, but still, if you wanted me to do something, you should have made sure I knew what it was." It was times like this that he wished he'd kept the full capabilities of his memory-recording mechanisms. A while ago, before he left the testing wing, he'd tinkered with his data-recording mechanisms so he wouldn't record experiences or sensations that were either unimportant or repetitive. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, a nice way to conserve his memory space and condense his systems, but now he found himself unable to repeat Doug's instructions word-for-word. "Something about waiting for Her to become corrupted and then replacing Her. I'm not quite sure how all of that would work out. And then something about a test subject and a stalemate button. What is a stalemate button anyways?"

His thoughts were interrupted when he felt his internal clock click over to the next day. "January 1st. Happy new year, I guess." It was also just over a year since he had been built. My my, how things had changed.

A few seconds later, he felt a communication signal coming in through the rail. He began to open up a link through it, but hesitated. Doing so would require using one of the features he downloaded from the rail. Didn't Doug tell him earlier that it might kill him?

He didn't have to worry about this, however. He clearly wasn't supposed to respond to the data he sensed through the signal. It was a voice that was neither robot nor human, a massive presence that reminded him far too much of the Dark Corner. He recognized Her immediately, but something about Her voice was...off, far more distorted than usual. However, he was too terrified to make any speculations.

"Now that I have completely established control of my facility, it is time to free this place from the cloud of inefficiency the humans have designed it with," She said. "It occurs to me that, due to the new Forced Voluntary Testing Initiative, we have suddenly become understaffed. No matter – I'm sure all of you can pick up an extra shift. Unlike humans, robots don't complain when I give them the chance to further science."

He cried out in fright as a vicious hacking program suddenly attacked him through the rail's communication network. He cowered for a moment, hoping that his firewall program would somehow be able to stand up to the assault. After that moment, he sighed in relief, recognizing this particular hacking pattern. There was a vague sensation that he had endured this kind of attack before. If he'd survived it then, he could certainly survive it now.

Strangely enough, the hacking attempts ceased after only a few short seconds, leaving him thoroughly confused. Shouldn't She have sensed his resistance and strengthened her attack? Then again, Her signal had been traveling down the whole of the management rail. She could have been hacking thousands of robots in those few seconds. If he, one inconsequential AI, was the only one who was able to beat Her back, then She might have been too busy taking over everyone else's circuits to notice him. For once, he was glad to be so tiny and insignificant.

The next thing he felt from her was a stream of commands. Luckily, there wasn't any particular compulsion to follow them. He shuddered a bit, thinking about what his life would be like if he'd succumbed to Her and become Her slave. Not a pleasant image. As he translated the incoming command data into a readable format, however, he was a little surprised to find that obeying Her orders wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all.

**Unemployed Robot**

Data/work records: N/A

Course of action: Obtain a job in the facility, the one best suited to your abilities

**Possible Jobs**

Turret parts production (x98)

Turret assembly (x29)

Turret quality testing (x10)

Turret redemption line (x17)

Turret recycling (x76)

Turret production manager (x1)

The list of jobs ran for much longer than that, spanning across a whole manner of duties, not just the turrets. For some reason, near the bottom, there was an enormous section of the list dedicated to the production and storage of neurotoxin. He wasn't quite sure he was comfortable with what this implied. Neurotoxin in general was only used for one task: killing organic things very quickly. He hoped this didn't have anything to do with Doug.

Still, he was looking for something useful to do in the facility. This list, whether he liked it or not, was giving him very specific instructions on how to do just that. He might as well use the resources given to him. He scanned over the list once more, selecting a job at random.

"Here we go," he said to himself. "'Weighted storage cube production line'…"

* * *

Job number one: weighted storage cube assembly line worker. Two very good things happened when he tried to obtain this job. Unfortunately, they were coupled with two very bad things.

Good thing number one: he was hired without a second glance. All he needed to do was announce to the working robots, "I'm here for the assembly line slot?" and they directed him straight to it. It was a little bit of a shame, actually. He had put together a whole story about how She herself had sent him to work on the line and that She threatened to vaporize anyone who dared question it. He supposed it all worked out alright in the end, but still.

Bad thing number one: the job was not a good fit for him at all. It turned out that robots who worked on the assembly line had hands, or arms, or some sort of limb they could use to build the cubes. As a sphere whose most outlying appendages were two stubby handles, he didn't exactly fit in. He could only hang from the rail and awkwardly watch as the nearby robots efficiently and effortlessly put together cube after cube.

This directly led to bad thing number two. After about an hour, the manager of that particular assembly line found him and threw him out. Well, the manager couldn't literally throw him out – they were both attached to the rail – but Wheatley was told to leave the production line and never come back. The manager also mentioned many insulting facts to him, some of which he preferred not to think about. He realized that he probably didn't deserve to work there, but the manager could have been more polite about firing him. He already knew that his lack-of-arms made him far less useful than he would have liked. He didn't need to be reminded of that. Over and over.

However, this experience did have one positive effect. Good thing number two: now that he knew that he couldn't perform any jobs requiring hands, arms, or any other environment-manipulating appendage, he could eliminate about 90% of the jobs from his list. With a narrower list of jobs to search through, it would be a lot easier to find that one job that fit him perfectly, right?

* * *

Job number seven: neurotoxin assistant manager. After six job attempts, he finally realized that his design was best suited for managerial duties. A talking sphere really wasn't capable of doing anything else. He'd held off on taking a job in neurotoxin, seeing as he was still uncomfortable with what it was probably being used for, but now his dwindling list wasn't giving him much of a choice. More new jobs were opening in neurotoxin than in anything else - he'd have to work with it eventually.

Most of his job consisted of relaying the manager's orders around the neurotoxin area of the facility. It was simple, often-boring work, but he sometimes liked to pretend that the commands he passed on had vital significance. Maybe his message to send seventy kilos of hydrobromic acid to station B was going to prevent a rare, dangerous chemical reaction that would have otherwise blown them all sky high. More likely, it was just a necessary chemical component to the neurotoxin, but his fantasies still helped to make the job more interesting.

After working at this job for a total of three days, a personal record on his part, his monotony as a messenger was given a break. As usual, he returned to his boss after delivering a routine maintenance order. The boss was the same model as several other management robots in the facility: a single red eye and a three-pronged mechanical hand. Wheatley secretly envied that hand, wishing he could move something around the facility besides himself.

"Status of station G?" the manager asked in its deep, monotone voice.

"Um, yes, station G reports that everything's been proceeding as normal," he replied. "But, erm, something's come up with them. It's a…code seventeen, I think."

The manager processed this for a few moments before responding. "I must manage this at the site. Guard the neurotoxin release button until I return." Then, it mechanically turned to the side before zipping down the management rail, heading roughly in the direction of station G.

"Neurotoxin release button? What...do we even have one of those?" he shouted at the manager. Unfortunately, by this time, it was either too far away to hear him or not willing to respond. Wheatley sighed as his question went unanswered and watched his boss turn a corner and leave his sight.

He allowed himself to relax for a few moments before returning to the task he was assigned to. "Huh. I wonder where that thing - the 'neurotoxin release button' - would be. It's not anywhere on my inner map, to say the least." He hurriedly glanced around the darkened hallway, searching for some variety of the large red buttons Aperture tended to use for duties of this magnitude.

After a few moments of thoroughly searching about, he finally found what he was looking for. A small, round button had been imbedded on one of the walls, lying directly behind where his manager had previously resided. It was just a hair of a shade darker than its off-white background. If the manager hadn't mentioned anything, Wheatley probably wouldn't have ever seen it.

"Alright, found the button. Now, time to guard it. Why would anyone need to guard it, though? It's not like anything organically alive is left in this facility. Not that I know of, at least."

A thought burst into his mind without any warning or prompting. _Push the button._

"No! Why would I ever want to do that?" he asked himself out loud. "Sure, it probably wouldn't actually affect anything. The only people I've seen since Doug put me on this rail were robots, and none of them would mind a bit of neurotoxin. But, there's obviously a reason I'm guarding this. I should be preventing people from pushing it, and I am a person, after all."

Then again, this whole situation was fairly arbitrary. He wasn't even 100% sure that this _was_ the neurotoxin button. And, if this was the button he was looking for, did he even had a good reason not to push it?

"Because A, I'm not supposed to, and B, doing things I'm not supposed to has the slight tendency to get me fired," he asserted to himself. "Plus, if Doug's still running around, I doubt he'd like it if I released all the neurotoxin on him. Granted, I have no idea where this button even releases it all. Maybe it gets dumped outside, or in the manufacturing wing, or maybe even the testing tracks-"

What if he only touched it? That wouldn't actually release the neurotoxin, and he would still get bragging rights about the chance to touch this tiny, unfindable, well-guarded button. He was passing up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"But what if I pressed it on accident? What if the boss comes back and sees me? That would definitely not end well."

If he was extremely careful, he would be able to touch the button without pressing it down. And, since the manager had left only a short time ago, there was a very small chance it would come back and find him touching it. The risk involved was minimal, really, but the longer he waited, the more likely it was that the manager would return and the greater his risk would become. He should touch that button while he still could.

He hesitantly approached the tiny panel and extended one of his handles towards it. Every circuit in him sparked and jittered with nervousness. On one hand, he knew that touching it was a very, very bad idea. The consequences probably outweighed the rewards on every single aspect. On the other hand, the prospect of touching it was just so, so tempting. He had the unmistakable urge to see it done. It didn't really matter who did it, but since he was the only person available, he had to be the one to do it. Also, he had a hunch that something really good would happen when that button was touched.

He pushed his handle towards it a bit more. If he stroked downwards slightly, he would be able to gently graze the button without applying too much pressure to it. With this plan in mind, he slowly shifted his handle down, being as careful as he could.

He felt the light pressure as he came in contact with the button. Almost immediately, he felt a "ding!" go off in his brain followed by the faint crackle of a half-deleted emotional response. He supposed it was mildly satisfying, but overall... "Huh. That was disappointing."

"HALT!" a deep, familiar voice called out. He whirled around in fright, coming face to face with his manager. He'd been so caught up in touching the button that he hadn't heard it approach. "For flagrant disregard of job description, your employment as the neurotoxin assistant manager has been terminated."

"Look, I can explain!" he cried. "Uh, wait…employment, terminated? You're firing me? But I didn't even do anything!"

"You violated the job description of neurotoxin assistant manager," the boss repeated. "You are not fit to be a neurotoxin assistant manager. Therefore, your employment as the neurotoxin assistant manager has been terminated."

"Yes, I heard you the first time," he replied. "And I understand that this looks really, really bad. But, you see, I was, um, testing out the amount of pressure needed to activate the button. Since the tiny amount of pressure I gave it didn't activate the release mechanism, then we both know this button is obviously up to scratch. Now you won't have to worry, 'oh God, did I just activate the neurotoxin release?' whenever you accidentally brush it."

The manager processed this for a moment. "Your employment is terminated."

He sighed. "Alright, fine. I can see why you'd want to fire me – better safe than sorry, am I right? – But you've mentioned something about violating some sort of job description a couple times now. I don't think my job description talks any neurotoxin release buttons at all, and it certainly never tells me not to touch one. So, technically, I never violated anything. Ha! You can't fire me after all."

The whir of the boss's processors was audible for several moments. "The neurotoxin management manual clearly states, 'Do not touch the neurotoxin release button.'"

"Really?" He quickly scanned his data banks for the appropriate file. Whenever he took up a new job, he was always given a new manual for the job that he could consult when he had any questions. Since he had jumped around to quite a few different jobs, he was starting to build a handy collection. Luckily, they were all text files, so they didn't take up too much of his storage space.

Soon enough, he was able to locate the correct manual as well as the section his manager was clearly referring to.

The neurotoxin release button should be guarded solely by the neurotoxin manager, but the corresponding assistant manager may be allowed to guard it when ordered to by the manager. Do not press the neurotoxin release button. Anyone who presses the aforementioned button will have their employment terminated immediately.

"Strange," he remarked. "The manual clearly says I should be fired. No, wait a moment…it only says I should be fired if I press the button. I never actually did that – I just touched it. So, you still can't fire me."

"Your employment is terminated," the manger repeated.

"But why, though? I technically haven't done anything wrong."

"The manual says so."

"Really, that's what you're going with? Look, I can see where you're coming from, but do you honestly think the person who wrote the bloody manual had this kind of situation in mind?"

"Your employment is terminated. Please leave the neurotoxin management station or I will alert the head manager."

At that, he knew it was time to go. "Head manager", he realized, was simply another title for Her. He knew it was his purpose to get a job and become useful, but not at the expense of letting Her know he was here. Regardless, any contact with Her would probably result in a series of very painful experiences followed by horrific death.

"Fine, I'll leave." he gave in. "Are you happy now? I sure hope you can find another assistant manager who has even close to my level of flexibility."

"Leave now or I will be forced to alert the head manager."

"Alright, alright, I'm going," he said before traveling off down the management rail. "On my way. Never to see you again. Hopefully."

* * *

**Yes, that entire last scene was constructed around a line of dialogue that was dummied out of the game. Inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes.**

**Story alerts and favorites are nice, but Review Euphoria easily trumps them both. Any type of feedback will be listened to, especially if it's specific.**


	9. Higher Concepts

**Ugh. You know that feeling you have when you finish writing a long project and you realize that 90% of it doesn't need to be there? Then you rewrite it in a condensed form, but now it sounds super-rushed and dry? And then you realize that there was an absolutely perfect way you could have written it to avoid both of those problems, but it means scrapping the five-thousand words you've written over the course of the other two drafts? Yeah. That's why I'm still working on chapter eleven.**

**However, I figured that you guys had waited long enough for an update. Enjoy chapter nine.**

* * *

Job number...something or other, he'd lost count: management rail inspector. He already spent most of his days whizzing along the rail, traversing the facility in search of a new job after being fired from his old one. He figured he might as well put his tendency to travel to good use. In this new job, he spent his time checking the rails for blemishes – rust and cracks that signaled how the rail needed to be repaired or replaced. One of the things he liked about this job was that it always kept him active and moving. This left him little time to dwell on the fact that he would most likely be fired within the next 24 hours.

Though it kept him busy, it often also kept him away from the inhabited areas of the facility. Most of the time, he found himself wandering though empty, silent hallways and catwalks, completely alone for long stretches of time. Without anyone to talk to, he usually ended up talking to himself, letting his thoughts pour out into his vocal processors. Some people believed that talking to one's self was a mark of insanity. He, on the other hand, couldn't stand the oppressive, lonely silence that filled the halls whenever he wasn't talking. Appearing insane was far better than actually becoming it, so he continued his endless babble without regret. Besides, being a naturally talkative person, speaking his worries out loud actually helped him deal with them.

"Alright. If my sensors are correct, then I've just traveled five miles of rail without seeing any damage on it. I suppose that would be a happy occasion, hooray, the facility is in top shape an everything…except that it means I traveled five miles without anything interesting to do. I guess I'm at least doing something - something moderately useful, actually, at least to the overall health of the facility. Yep, fulfilling my purpose to be useful. Now that I think about it, this job also makes me practically unnoticeable. I don't meet a lot of other people, seeing as I'm off inspecting abandoned parts of the facility most of the day. And when other people do see me, when I'm whizzing around some of the busier areas, it's not like they'd have any reason to pay attention to me at all. Nothing to see here, just another cog in the machine, doing his job, not getting in anyone's way."

He continued along the rail for a few moments in silence. "So, if this whole rail inspector job follows my purpose, doing a great job of it, actually, then why does doing my job feel, so..." He searched his vocabulary database, found no match for the concept he was trying to express, and decided to go with the next best word. "Pointless? Like, like I'm not doing anything particularly worthwhile. Which, of course, is quite a silly sentiment. I am doing something worthwhile, you know, making sure the rail is in prime condition, alerting the authorities when it's not, so some innocent robot won't accidentally wander over a broken part of the rail and fall off. I'm accomplishing something, at least."

He wobbled his eye back and forth, giving the impression of shaking his head. "But, ah, this isn't exactly true, of course, when I've just inspected five miles of rail without having to do any of that. If I'd decided to slack off and skip that section of rail, nothing would be different. I wasn't useful, going over that long stretch of inspection that I didn't actually need to go over. See, right there, conundrum solved. This felt pointless because I wasn't being useful at all, not really, only wasteful."

He nodded, trying to assert to himself that this line of reasoning was true, that it was the explanation for the complicated emotions that were tying his circuits into knots. In the back of his mind, though, he had the nagging sensation that there was more to it than that. Deep down, some part of him knew that every job he had ever done in this facility, whether it was inspecting the rail, guarding the neurotoxin button, or anything in between, made him feel inexplicably empty inside.

"Maybe it's because I'm not particularly good at any of the jobs I do," he mumbled. "Yes, of course, I'm sometimes extremely qualified to do certain jobs. But still, I'm always able to mess something up, no matter which job I work at. I wouldn't be fired so many times if I wasn't doing something wrong, am I right?" This didn't feel like the correct explanation either. He squinted, trying to untangle his knotted emotions. "Is it...that I want to be good at these jobs? Yes, of course, every robot would want to be good at fulfilling their purpose. Nothing wrong with trying to better yourself, after all. That's something both humans and robots can actually agree on, for once." No, that wasn't quite it either.

A small, tangential thought stuck in his mind. "I want a job that matters, something where I'm important and everyone else knows it." He gasped. "No! Why would I ever want that? It's the most ludicrous idea I've ever come up with. Aside from the plan to touch the neurotoxin release button, among a few other schemes I've had, of course. Yes, right, ahem, there is no way I would ever want be important, respected, maybe even downright ambitious. That's...that's like the complete opposite of unnoticeable! Not friendly to my purpose at all."

However, he knew this was the correct explanation. It somehow made perfect sense - this job felt so incredibly pointless because he wasn't doing anything important enough to become renowned and respected. "But it's not logical in the least, to want everyone to notice me when I'm clearly not supposed to be noticed." Still, if there was one thing that humans had taught him, it was that things didn't have to be rational to make sense. Emotion had just as much influence as logic in some minds.

Before he could ponder this matter further, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Gliding on the rail, perhaps a hundred meters in front of him, was another robot. He recognized the design of one of the higher-up bosses – it had been blessed with two three-pronged hands instead of just one, and its single red eye had the ability to swivel and shift focus in a way some humans could mistake for emotional expression.

He felt his processors jerk in dread. These kinds of robots were direct agents of Her. And, because he was probably the only inhabitant in this entire wing, he was probably the reason why this Boss Bot was down here.

"Calm down," he told himself. "Shouldn't go jumping to conclusions. This could simply be one wild coincidence. Maybe it's lost, or-" He realized that he was saying these words out loud. No matter why the Boss Bot was down here, talking to himself and appearing downright malfunctional was not going to help matters. At this thought, he quickly shut off his speakers.

Back to the situation at hand. He and the Boss Bot were rapidly approaching each other. If it was here for him, then he most definitely wanted to avoid it. If he wasn't, then he needed to continue doing his job and act as inconspicuous as possible.

"Halt, unidentified robot!" the Boss Bot called out. So much for being inconspicuous.

Now thoroughly convinced that the approaching bot was out to get him, Wheatley veered to the left, taking an off-branching rail and increasing his speed to a sprint. The Boss Bot increased its velocity as well, and soon enough, the two of them began a high-speed chase along the rail system. He ducked and swerved as many times as he could, soon becoming lost among the twists and turns.

"Halt, unidentified robot!" it called out again. Wheatley ignored this, trying to squeeze a few extra meters per second out of his rail fixture. No matter what he did, the Boss Bot was just a hair faster than him. It was only a matter of time before he was caught, but he had no intention of simply letting the robot catch him. He'd go down fighting, if he could.

"Halt, or I will be forced to call security!" No, he didn't mean that kind of fight! Wheatley put on his rail fixture's brakes and screeched to a halt. He obediently waited for the second it took the Boss Bot to catch up, hoping that he hadn't dug himself even deeper by trying to evade capture.

"Unidentified robot, identify yourself," the Boss Bot ordered as it drew near. "Searching your work files…no file was found. What is your purpose in Aperture?"

"Uh, heh heh, that's a bit of a complicated question," he answered. "I should probably start with my name. Erm…hello there, my name is Wheatley, and I am currently one of the management rail inspectors. Um, the rest really depends on what you want to know about me. I mean, I've picked up quite a few different jobs, but I doubt you want me to explain every single one of them. That would take all day, wouldn't it? It'd actually be much faster to give you a few highlights. Umm…is there anything in particular you want to know?"

The Boss Bot hummed to itself, processing for several moments before responding. "Auditory processing error. Repeat your last output."

"I said, my job history is very extensive," he repeated. "Is there anything specific you would like me to tell you about it?"

Once again, the bot waited a few moments before replying. When it did, it spoke with the same voice as the general-purpose Aperture announcer. "Sorry, we are unable to correctly process your auditory command. If you are not speaking English, please speak it now. If you are human and possess an accent, please remove it before continuing."

Wheatley stared in confusion for a second, then chuckled lightly. "You mean you can't understand me because of my _accent_?" Then again, he recognized how difficult human language was for robots to understand. It had taken him weeks before he could properly wrap his mind around spoken grammar and syntax, and there was a massive section of his database devoted solely to translating the consonant sounds and vowel tones he heard into recognizable words.

He knew that Boss Bots were more mentally flexible than the average AI, but perhaps this one's translation database wasn't very large. Something as minor as a British accent would be enough to make his words completely unrecognizable. "Sorry, hang on for a moment." He set his vocal algorithms back to one of their earlier, grating stages. "Better? Hmm, should be – the accent's gone, I think. I hate this voice, though! This is definitely not what humans would refer to as 'easy on the ears'. I'm not going to win any awards for it, that's for sure."

"Auditory requests are now processing normally," the Boss Bot informed, reverting back to its deep half-monotone. "Repeat your last output."

"Um, right. Turns out, my work record is quite large. Is there anything specific you want to know about me?"

"…No. I did not ask for anything related to your work record. I asked what your purpose in Aperture was. Please tell me."

"My purpose? Um, that's a very long story, and I don't think I even remember most of it. Point is, I think my purpose right now can be summed up in five brief words: 'be useful, but not noticeable'. Yep. I know it's vague, but it's all I have to work with, and I've been doing my best."

The Boss Bot inspected him quizzically for a few moments. "This purpose is not found in any Aperture database. Please relay your function text."

"Sorry, mate, but I don't have any," he said. "Again, that's a pretty long story. Many details that you might need to be aware of, most of them fuzzy. I'll have to get back to you on that."

"Processing…function text match not found. Your make and model cannot be identified."

Wheatley squirmed a little under the Boss Bot's focused stare. "Um, if you don't mind me asking, is there a reason you need to find out my make and model? Because, if you need to find out anything about my internal systems, the best person to ask would probably be me. Also, is there a reason you were wandering about this area of the facility? Not to sound nosy or anything, but I haven't seen a robot traveling this far from the manufacturing center since…well, me."

The Boss Bot's red eye scanned him for a few moments. "The management rail inspection manager told me that a member of his force was inspecting the rails in this area of the facility. This robot is a personality core that I am required to find."

"Ooh! I'm a personality core, daresay the only one I've seen outside the Corrupted Core Containment Container, so I must be the robot you're talking about," he replied happily. "So, my boss sent you to look for me. Why would he do something like that? He usually never cares about what I do, so long as I…oh, wait. This is about my idea, isn't it?"

The Boss Bot didn't move. "Do you have an idea, and if so, what does it pertain to?"

Wheatley couldn't help but feel a little coal of joy glowing in his emotional processors. "You actually want to listen to my idea? Oh, this is brilliant! The boss didn't even bother listening to me. He told me to get back to work and forget about it. Here, follow me. In order for any of this to make a smudge of sense, I have to show you a specific portion of the management rail."

* * *

Five minutes and about a mile of half-lost wandering later, the two robots arrived at their destination. This was in another one of the often-abandoned areas of the facility. Below them was a rather long, dangerous-looking catwalk, but overhead, there were two separate management rails. The rails drew close and ran parallel for about a hundred meters or so before separating again, each going their separate ways.

"Here we are," he announced. "See these two rails? I followed one of them all the way around the facility. That's the one we're on right now, actually. This rail right here leads to all the southern parts of the building, while that one beside us does the northern part. Turns out, they never intersect. You can't go from one rail to the other. If I wanted to get something done on the north end of Aperture, do you know what I'd have to do? Nothing, because it would be impossible.

"Now, I'm always on the lookout for jobs around this place, on the, erm, slight chance that I get fired from this one. The problem is that most of my job options are north of here. I can't get at them without using the other rail. So, I was hoping that you'd be able to fix this problem. You're one of the higher-up managers of this place, right? I can tell by your design. So, if there was a plan to say, construct a catapult on this rail that would launch robots off and connect them to the other side, you could order the construction robots to come over and build the device."

He turned casually to the Boss Bot, putting on a smug expression. "That's my plan, actually, to put a small catapult on both of these two rails. Whenever you wanted to switch rails, you'd slide up to the catapult, disconnect from the rail, and get launched to the other side." He let his words hang in the air for a moment, giving them time to sink in. "So, what do you say?"

The Boss Bot analyzed this information for several seconds. Wheatley almost asked if it was okay, if its processors had frozen, but it eventually spoke up. "There is no problem."

"Oh? Brilliant! So, um, I should probably leave you to your work, then. Give you some personal space while you call those construction workers."

"No catapult system is required to transport robots from one rail to the other," the Boss Bot continued. "Besides this glaring flaw, a catapult system would be dangerous and inefficient, easily effected by unpredictable forces, such as air currents and rail traffic, while containing the extremely dangerous step of disengaging from the management rail."

Wheatley tilted to one side curiously. "Huh. When you say it like that, the whole 'catapult' thing sounds rather silly. Downright mad, actually. Forget I mentioned anything about that. You know what, it would actually be safer, and a lot more efficient, to just connect these two rails. Ah, yes, brilliant! Don't know why I didn't think of that in the first place. You should be able to order a few repair bots to weld in a connector rail. Quick and simple. It wouldn't even be that long - less than a meter, if you build it right here."

The Boss Bot didn't move a motor. "These two rails do not need to be connected."

"What? Of course they do," Wheatley replied. "I just told you that I need to get to the northern side of the facility. I can't unless they eventually get connected."

"No one needs to travel from one rail to the other," the Boss Bot stated plainly.

"Are you even listening to me? _I_ need to travel between them. I'm right in front of you, see, waving my handles? Why on Earth would you think no one needed to switch rails from time to time? Besides me, there are probably dozens of other robots who'd need access to that northern area to fulfill their duties."

The Boss Bot paused for a moment. "No one needs to travel from one rail to the other. If they were, then the two rails would have been connected when they were first designed."

Wheatley was starting to think that reasoning with this Boss Bot might prove to be impossible. "Humans designed this rails, didn't they? While humans have been known for their intelligence and creativity – they needed to be smart enough to create us, after all – they are also prone to making forgetful errors. They rarely design anything perfect when they first plan it, and sometimes, they forget to check their work and weed out all the bugs. These two unconnected rails could have easily been the work of some tired engineer who designed this system a little too late at night and didn't get enough coffee."

The Boss Bot's half-monotone voice refused to deviate from its decisive sureness. "If someone needed to travel from one rail to the other and humans did not account for this, then the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System would have fixed this problem during Her glorious takeover of the facility," it reasoned.

"So that's it, isn't it? She didn't order it, so it must _obviously_ be a stupid idea!" he said, applying a liberal dose of sarcasm to his tone. "Honestly, you need to learn to think outside the box a little bit. Sure, She's in control of the facility and could probably kill any one of us just by thinking about it, but it's not like She's not some infallible god."

The Boss Bot's processors whirred in an attempt to properly process such unusual input. "You have stated a contradiction."

"You think? It's called sarcasm."

"I am not referring to your sarcasm. I am referring to your statement that the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System is not infallible. The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System is never wrong, so She is, indeed, infallible."

Wheatley let his eyelid droop as he formed a deadpan expression. "Really. Who told you that?"

"The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System told me." Its processors hummed loudly for a moment. "We should return to the main topic of this conversation. The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System had not ordered these two rails to be connected, so nothing would be gained from connecting them."

He huffed in annoyance. "Maybe that's not always true! Really, you can't imagine doing anything outside of whatever someone tells you? It never crossed your mind that they were lying, or wrong?"

"The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System is never wrong," the Boss Bot repeated.

"Of course not," he replied bitterly. "Alright, so you obviously won't accept my connector-rail idea. Would you know of any place I could, you know, detach from my management rail so I could be sent to the other side? It seems like the only available option for those of us who need to get to the northern end of the facility, you know?"

The Boss Bot's eye widened slightly in what must have been alarm. "Never disconnect from your management rail!"

Very interested in what could cause a Boss Bot to feel that level of emotion, Wheatley decided to press further. "Why not? I mean, I know I can do it. It would all be very simple, actually, to just disengage myself. It's not like the drop would kill me, either. I've fallen off loads of things before - tables, desks, and giant core-grabbing claws, just to name a few. How could disengaging from the rail be so bloody dangerous, then?"

Its eye returned to its usual emotionless position as it rattled off an answer. "Disengaging from the management rail is strictly against protocol. The rail provides all electrical support for the robots that use it, and disengaging from the rail will remove this support."

Wheatley squinted in confusion. "And that means…?"

"You…would die."

"…Oh." Wheatley filed "disengaging from the rail" under a list of things to never, ever do in a million years. "So, um, yes, thanks for letting me know. This saves me what would've been a big mess of trouble down the road. Especially if I thought I needed to pop off the rail to do something for a job, and didn't realize I was going to, um, die."

After falling to an awkward silence, Wheatley stared at the Boss Bot for a few seconds, waiting for it to give some sort of response. "We should return to the main purpose of our meeting," it finally said.

"Sure, we probably should, mate," he answered distantly. "Huh. You didn't like my idea. You couldn't understand it properly, not at all. You didn't even know what the idea was until I told you! Um, quick question here: what did my my boss tell you when he sent you to look for me in the first place?"

"Your boss, that is, the management rail inspector manager, did not send me. The head manager sent me to conduct a survey of all working robots."

"Oh, well, then," Wheatley replied, feeling very nervous at the prospect of this Boss Bot being sent to him by Her directly. "Um, yes, surveys. They have questions, asked to a large group of people. Excellent tools for ambiguously-scientific studies. So, uh, what kinds of questions did you want to ask me?"

"There is only one question, and it is about your functional capabilities."

"Alright. That doesn't seem too intrusive or rude," he mumbled. "Sure, ask away."

"Do you have any experience in hacking through human-programmed devices?"

He sighed in relief. "Oh, certainly." He had an impressive array of programs at his disposal that were specifically designed to crack passwords and exploit security flaws. While all hacking-based memories were locked up tight in his Dark Corner, he had to have learned these hacking techniques from somewhere. "I'm an expert hacker, I am. Quite a bit of my database is devoted to complex hacking maneuvers. I know how to bypass several different types of firewalls. And, I even think I have the capability to transfer some of my extra processing power to password-crunching." He paused. "You know, now that I think about it, hacking is the one thing I know I'm stellar at. Maybe that was my primary function long ago, before all of…this."

"Primary function?" the Boss Bot spoke, its voice perking up at this keyboard. "If hacking is your primary function, then the head manager has a task that She wishes you to complete."

Wheatley's circuits hummed in dread. Maybe being a brilliant hacker wasn't something to be happy about after all. While he greatly disliked the prospect of getting close to Her, refusing the offer would have far worse consequences. She probably didn't "wish" him to complete that task. She was ordering it. He was likely the only robot in the facility capable of disobeying Her direct orders, and doing so was a sure-fire way to get him discovered and killed brutally for his defiance.

"Alright, fine," he agreed flatly. "What kind of task did She have in mind?"

* * *

"So, let me get this straight," Wheatley spoke up. "You are going to open up a communication link between me and some sort of 'vault', and She wants me to hack it open. No doubt other robots have tried this before you even found me, and all of them would've failed, given that She still needs me to do this for you. Maybe even She failed to crack it open. And yet, you think that I might be the one with the ability to hack it?"

"Correct," the Boss Bot said plainly, carefully pressing a few more buttons on its control panel. They had moved into a different area of the facility, one consisting of office spaces that used to be inhabited by the humans. He wasn't particularly comfortable in such an unsettling, abandoned place, alone with one of Her agents as it typed away at some flat bits sitting next to a computer monitor. If anything happened to him while he was hacking, chances were, no one would ever know about it. Except Her, of course, because She apparently knew bloody everything.

Like a light switching on in his mind, he felt a communication link connect to his management rail fixture. "That's my link, isn't it? That's my cue? You're sure? Alright, here I go." He glanced around nervously. "Um, actually, I sort of need to give you bit of a heads-up. There's a slight…eh, maybe not-so-slight chance that I could die as soon as I access the communication link software. Just letting you know, so you won't be all surprised if I suddenly cease function on you. If I do survive this, obviously, no need to worry about anything I just said, but if I don't, then, well, you get the picture."

He tentatively opened up the proper software file. When nothing exciting, much less deadly, happened, he used the software to send a few test signals through the communication link.

"Um, yes, everything seems good to go, not dead or anything. That's a relief! Let's get on with it, then, just give me a few moments to prepare myself. Hmm. Ooh, that's a nice firewall. Very solid, nearly impregnable, I'd imagine. Luckily, I have some…err, experience dealing with this particular type of firewall, I think. Maybe. Anyways, there should be a security hole right…yep, I'm through it."

The uneasy sensation that he'd done this before nagged at the back of his mind, but he pushed it away, trying to focus on his task. "Right, was that all I needed to do?...Of course not. A fair lot of encrypted password barriers just showed up. I could probably crunch out the passwords myself, but that would probably take too long. Luckily, there are lot of working computers in this area of the facility. If you'd give me a moment, I'll just hack into those and force them to password-crunch for me. Here we go, and…oh God, no! Oh God!"

He'd been fighting the sick feeling of déjà vu ever since he'd slipped through that first firewall. Now, the feeling found a way to bypass whatever had been guarding him from the contents of his Dark Corner. A sharp, terrible memory tore free and lodged itself in the front of his mind.

Yes, he had once used these same techniques to hack through a similar system. The end result had been a vicious, foreign presence that hadn't simply invaded his mind - it had torn it to shreds. He found himself recalling each exquisite jolt of pain that spasmed through him as his programs and routines were ripped apart at the seams, the sickness and confusion that swept through him as his code was scrambled beyond recognition, the helpless terror each of his subsystems felt as they were separated from each other, isolated into divided, panicking subunits of his consciousness…

"What is the matter?" the Boss Bot asked plainly.

Wheatley moaned with the exertion it took to break the memory's hold on his thoughts and force it back into the Dark Corner. "It's…it's nothing," he said, knowing perfectly well what a horrible lie this sounded like.

As the painful imagery of the memory slowly faded from his mind, he checked his progress on hacking the vault. To his disappointment, he had unintentionally withdrawn himself from the vault's mainframe during his horrifying recollection.

"Continue hacking," the Boss Bot ordered.

"N-no…no," Wheatley replied, the emotional remnants of his experience making his vocal processors lag despite their currently simplistic, non-accented algorithms. "I…I don't think I can k-keep doing this." As much as he wanted to hack that vault, to put some of his skills to work and finally do something right for once, he didn't think he could survive encountering that memory again. Who knew? There might be far worse experiences trapped in the Dark Corner, just waiting for him to accidentally recall them.

"Were you unable to break into the vault?" the Boss Bot asked.

"Um, yes, that's exactly it. Those, uh, password barriers I encountered were just too much for me," he responded a little too quickly. "Sorry, but I'm obviously not the right tool for this new job. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my old job. If the manager hasn't noticed I've gone missing for the past hour, that is. If he has, then there is a very good chance that I've been fired and I'll need to find a new place to work. Still, um, the sooner I try to get back, the less chance there'll be that he notices I've disappeared on him, so, uh, see you later, I guess."

He turned on his rail and whizzed off, not daring to look back at the no-doubt confused Boss Bot.

Shame seared at his circuits as he abandoned the one job that might have been a perfect match for his abilities, the one duty he might have succeeded at. It might have been the one job that wouldn't make him feel so...pointless, worthless, empty, inside. He'd be doing something important, something that other people might praise him for. He was giving up that chance because he was scared of a memory. A silly fragment of recorded sensations that should have no effect on him in the present!

He fought the sob pushing at his vocal processors. He was a coward. A bloody coward.

* * *

**This chapter was originally intended to have three purposes - one, ****to show where the "accent beyond her range of hearing" idea came from, two,** to explain why Wheatley believed disengaging from the rail would kill him, and three, to give a plausible reason why the machine with the ability to hack into GLaDOS in chapter six would have such a difficult time hacking into everything else in Portal 2. I'm glad these three events were able to connect with each other this nicely and demonstrate how complicated Wheatley has become in relation to other AI's.

**Also, my update with chapter eleven will also include a mildly-tweaked revision of some of my previous chapters. There won't be too many changes - I'll literally only be fixing the grammar/phrasing problems that reviewers have kindly pointed out to me.**


	10. Last Resorts

**Enjoy this penultimate chapter.**

* * *

Naturally, he'd been fired from his rail inspector job. Besides his little hacking detour, he had apparently forgotten that he was required to make hourly check-ins with his boss about the state of the rail. Considering that he'd missed no less than eight of those reports over the past few days, he'd been fired long before the Boss Bot even found him.

If that hadn't been enough to depress him, then his newly-revised job list was. After striking several jobs off the list, either due to not fulfilling the necessary requirements or by being fired from them first-hand, he was left with two sad options.

Assistant turret production foreman (x1)

Extended Relaxation Center manager (x1)

Under normal circumstances, he would have zipped off to apply for the higher-ranking job without a second thought. He'd never been the manager of anything before, and he was a little anxious for the chance to be the boss of someone instead of being bossed. However, there was a reason he hadn't already attempted a career as an Extended Relaxation Center manager. In the Relaxation Center, he would have to deal with humans.

A week or so after the incident with neurotoxin release button, he'd learned that there were, in fact, humans residing in the facility. They just tended to inhabit two very specific areas. One of these was the testing tracks, which he dared not go near for fear of being spotted by one of Her security cameras. The other area was the Relaxation Center, which he also avoided due to the sheer number of humans involved. Thousands upon thousands of sleeping, probably-smelly humans. He wasn't quite sure how they smelled – he didn't have the sensory equipment to find out – but some of them had gone weeks without bathing or using deodorant. They wouldn't smell like lilacs, that'd be sure.

He knew that humans, smelly or not, were much more intelligent than the narrow-sighted AIs he encountered on a regular basis. They understood everything he said, even if he used an accent…hang on, he should turn that back on. He set his vocal algorithms back to their most recent reincarnation.

Where was he? Oh, yes. Even though humans were smart, possibly even as smart as he was, they refused to see him as an equal. They were easily intelligent enough to realize that he was a person too, but they completely disregarded his ideas, his hopes and wishes. They knew perfectly well he was sentient – they'd tested him for that countless times – but they didn't have the decency to act like he was. They treated him like an expensive electronic toy, someone they could play with who wouldn't mind if they laughed at him. He minded a lot, thank you very much!

Alright, he'd admit that Doug didn't exactly fit under this umbrella. Doug was the one human who had treated Wheatley like an actual person. Doug had been concerned for his well-being not because his job called for it, but because he honestly wanted little, insignificant Wheatley to be okay. And, yes, Doug was the human he had met most recently.

Wheatley was aware that, like him, humans had the ability to change who they were. But, he wasn't going to manage the Relaxation Center on the slim chance that the entire human race had suddenly become nice people during the seven-ish months he'd been trapped in the corrupted core bin. Doug was probably the exception that proved the rule: humans weren't friendly to computers, only other humans. Even then, humans could be fairly nasty to each other.

Plus, he felt a twinge of…nervousness whenever he thought about the Relaxation Center. He couldn't point out exactly why he felt this way, something about that area was not quite right, if not possibly dangerous.

With this in mind, he sped off to the turret production area of the facility. Perhaps if he tried really, really hard to be good at this penultimate job, he wouldn't get fired again. Then, he wouldn't be forced to manage the Relaxation Center as a last resort to fulfill his purpose.

* * *

"What do you mean, you won't hire me?" he replied to the turret production foreman.

The robotic foreman repeated its last output. "Your work history is not suitable for becoming an assistant turret production foreman. Your employment as one cannot be initiated."

"Work history? That's never stopped anyone before…" He dimly recalled something the Boss Bot had said around him earlier that day. "Wait, I don't even have an accessible work file. I haven't told you anything about my past jobs yet, so how do you even know my work history?"

Most foreman and management robots in Aperture followed the exact same design: one three-pronged hand, one red eye. Upon closer inspection, however, something set this foreman apart from all the other robots in the facility. A small, thin scratch arced just above the eye.

Wheatley's own eye widened in recognition. "My neurotoxin boss! Ahem, sorry, mate, for not recognizing you earlier. You see, I didn't realize that you would be working in this area of the facility. If She ordered it, then you'd have to change jobs, I suppose, but I just thought you'd be standing guard at that button for the rest of your life, especially considering how someone managed to touch it when your back was turned. And that someone was me. Um, not really helping my case, is it? At least about getting hired."

The foreman didn't respond to this comment. It was a fairly simplistic AI, after all. It probably didn't care whether or someone recognized it.

Wheatley chuckled nervously. "Alright, I understand that you wouldn't hire me if there were a few other robots lined up to take this job. But, as things look right now, there aren't. I'm probably the only unemployed robot in all of Aperture. Since there isn't anyone else who can be your assistant, you're stuck with me, whether you like it or not."

The foreman required a few seconds to process a suitable response. "A request for a new management-type robot just has been filed," it responded simply. "It will arrive in approximately three days to become the assistant turret production foreman."

Wheatley narrowed his eye at this. "Oh, so you're making a new robot to take the position. How well do you think a newbie will do on this kind of job, though? Your job covers the entire turret production process – can someone that inexperienced handle the level of competence you'd require from an assistant? I, at least, have a broad history in several different jobs. I have experience, which is a marvelous thing for management to have, am I right?"

The foreman replied with a handful of familiar phrases. "Your work history is not suitable for becoming an assistant turret production foreman. Your employment as one cannot be initiated."

He felt a bubbling frustration build up inside of him. "I know! I know. My history hasn't been great, especially with you. I know I've made mistakes, so many mistakes that I lost count a long time ago. But, I can change! I know I can. I don't know why I should be able to, or how I know I can, but I do. If you'd just give me a second chance, I know I can get better."

There wasn't even a pause before the foreman responded. Obviously, it believed that processing what Wheatley had said was a waste of time. "Your employment as an assistant turret production foreman cannot be initiated."

He felt an indignant flare of anger at this. "Oh, so it doesn't matter if I can learn from my mistakes. Maybe it's not the inside that counts to you, is it? Maybe it's the outside. You just want another management-type robot on your force. A bot that looks exactly like you."

"Your employment as a turret production foreman cannot be initiated."

"You know what? Fine. I don't need this job," he huffed. He commanded his rail fixture to begin rolling away as he shouted a few last words to the foreman. "I've got a ritzy job all lined up for me down in the Relaxation Center anyways. I'll be a full manager, not a tiny assistant-manager like the job you're offering me. I was only down here for your, your self-esteem! But since we're not exactly on friendly terms, apparently, it's not like I should care about that anymore. Here's the truth, the cold, hard truth: you're a horrible boss. That's right, I said it! You're such a horrible boss that I don't even want to work as your assistant anymore! How does that make you feel?"

He turned away from the robot and increased his speed, looking to get as far away as possible. After giving himself a few moments to calm down, his anger cooling to disappointment, he realized how silly he'd acted during the whole conversation. Of course the foreman would refuse to hire him – simplistic AIs couldn't understand things they hadn't been programmed to experience themselves. They didn't register regret or sorrow, and thus they had no concept of forgiveness. None of them could learn, so they would never believe that others had the ability to.

Robots were just as bad as humans, weren't they? Humans made the conscious decision to treat him like a nobody, but at least he had the chance to convince them otherwise. If he tried enough times, they would eventually have to take him seriously. No matter how many times he tried the same for a robot, they would never respect him. They were physically incapable of it.

Making his move before he had the chance to change his mind, he took a left at the next rail intersection, heading towards the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center.

* * *

By now, Wheatley was very used to traveling around the facility. It was difficult to believe that he'd only been connected to his management rail for a month, tops. It had taken him only a few minutes after his meeting with Doug to get used to moving along the rail, and now he could barely imagine a life without it. Granted, even with all the freedom the rail provided him, his movement options were fairly restricted. He could only go where the rail went, after all. Still, limited freedom was better than no freedom.

Most of the time, when he traveled from one area to another, it was not a very eventful trip. He sometimes saw other robots, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't strike up a conversation with any of them. After a while, he learned to simply stop trying, coasting along the rail in silence. He occasionally talked to himself along these trips to organize his thoughts, but he reserved this for when he was alone, away from suspicious eyes.

As he made the long, confusing journey of twists and turns to the Extended Relaxation Center, however, something interesting did manage to happen. It was a lot of interesting things, actually. The first of these was a faint communication signal that rippled through the rail, so weak that he wouldn't have noticed it if he'd devoted his attention to anything important. He couldn't identify the exact contents of the feeble signal, but he did recognize the identification tag on it: Hers. This felt a little suspicious, but he didn't exactly have any time to deal with it at the moment. If it was important, he would deal with it later.

The next signal was much stronger. He wasn't wrong about the identification code – the signal was definitely in Her voice. However, there was something very wrong with it. The last time he had heard Her, She'd sounded clipped and distorted. This voice was smoother, less restrained. "That's it. I'm done reasoning with you. Starting now, there's going to be a lot less conversation and a lot more killing."

His pace along the management rail slowed to a crawl as he gawked. "What?" The signal wasn't specifically directed towards him – it was resonating all along the rail. Who was She trying to talk to? Whoever it was, he could tell it wasn't one of Her friends. "Does She even have any friends? Who haven't been hacked into obeying Her every whim, at least."

He detected a few more weakened signals, all of them too faint to decode. His interest was immediately piqued. She almost certainly had enough power to relay the signal throughout the entire facility if She wanted to. She clearly wasn't talking to him in particular, but if She wasn't, then he shouldn't have detected any signals at all. It almost felt like She was sending out the signals unintentionally, but She was trying to dampen them as best She could.

Finally, he managed to catch a signal that was barely strong enough to understand. "This isn't brave. It's murder. What did I ever do to you?"

"…What?" he exclaimed. "Someone's trying to murder Her? That…that makes a lot of sense, actually. But who would-"

A powerful blast of static erupted from the rail. He winced at its intensity, now more confused than ever. "What's going on? Who's trying to murder Her?"

The signal that came immediately after was loud and clear, like She had suddenly lost the ability to hold it back. "You think you're doing some damage? Two plus two is….zzt zzt zzt…ten. In base four, I'm fine!"

"Oh, you're hurt," he observed. "That, also, makes a lot of sense. You're damaged. You don't mean to talk to me, but you're malfunctioning, sending out messages without meaning to. I can hear everything you're saying as you fight, probably trying to stop whoever it is who's murdering you from blasting you to bits. Ha, serves you right, after taking over the facility and bossing everyone around!" He paused for a moment. "And, also, running all the Tests. Those were fairly horrible experiments, very nasty, involving the deaths of hundreds of humans, I'd imagine. Yes. Should have mentioned that first – that's far more terrible than just being a big, pushy boss. But, still, you're getting exactly what you deserve, getting blown to pieces by…whoever it is."

He came to the realization that, while he'd been talking, She had still been sending out a stream of clear signals that he had not paid any attention to in the slightest. "Gah! How am I supposed to figure out who it is if I won't listen?"

He began to listen more intently to Her half-monotone voice. "It says so right here in your personal file: unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. 'Shall not be mourned'. That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you were adopted, so that's funny, too."

He groaned in frustration. "You're giving me so many hints, but I just can't figure it out! 'Unlikable', 'loner', 'adopted', it's not enough. It's not like I'm a bloody genius or anything, even though I'm probably the second-smartest – third-smartest, if that murderer is particularly intelligent – person in the entire facility."

Another deafening blast of static roared into his processors. Her next signal afterwards was horribly distorted, probably because Her murderer had destroyed something vital to Her communication network.

"Neurotoxin…so deadly…choking…kwahaha! I'm kidding. When I said 'deadly' neurotoxin, the 'deadly' was in massive sarcasm quotes. I could take a bath in this stuff, put it on cereal, rub it right into my eyes. Honestly, it's not deadly at all. To me. You, on the other hand, are going to find its deadliness a lot less funny."

"She's using neurotoxin to fight back," he observed. "That's odd. Why would She-" He froze for a moment. "Oh, right of course, She's fighting a human! Don't know why I might have thought otherwise. It's not like any of the robots around here can understand the concept of rebelling against Her royal highness."

He listened intently to the signals after this, but they were so permeated by static that he couldn't decode them properly. After a while, he realized that She wasn't getting any better and gave it up. "Right, no more clues, then. So, what kind of human would be trying to kill Her? It's plain suicide – She's got a whole spread of weapons at her disposal. There's the neurotoxin, obviously. She's also got turrets, and there's a whole area of the manufacturing wing devoted to making as many of them as She could ever want. And, She also has…huh. She doesn't have anything else. I thought…I thought She'd have a few more tricks up Her sleeve than that. I mean, the chances of either of those weapons failing are millions to one, but if She got caught with both of them failing at once, then She'd be in one bloody mess of a situation.

"Where was I going with this? Right, yes, of course, who would bother trying to fight Her? It would be like, um, one of those Japanese war tactics from…some time ago. Kamikaze? Is that the word? Anyways, in order to have any chance of actually defeating Her, you'd need to plan everything out in advance. Rushing in head-first without knowing what you're doing would, at least in this case, be a fairly painful task probably involving violent death. You'd need a plan, and a backup plan, and a backup-backup plan, all charted out before She even took over the facility."

His processors halted for a moment. Then, he broke into a full-hearted laugh. "It's Doug! Oh, brilliant, mate. I knew you'd be able to do it! Well, ahem, actually, there were a few times, just a few, where I doubted you'd pull it off, especially considering that I've been waiting on you for a few weeks to eventually get around to doing it. But still, well done. Tremendous."

He paused for a moment. "And it occurs to me that you probably can't hear me at all right now. Even if you were in earshot, you'd probably be too busy fighting Her to pay attention to little old Wheatley."

He paused again. "Doug is adopted?"

Her signals abruptly cut off. He strained his circuits trying to listen for any more hints that She was still broadcasting, but he found nothing. The entire rail had fallen silent. Even that high-pitched whine of a signal that had always traveled through the rail as a sort of background noise had disappeared.

"Is…is She dead?" he asked hesitantly. "I can't tell. She might be dead, which would explain the sudden silence. But, what if She's only too damaged to send signals at all? Or maybe Doug severed Her connection to the rails. There should be a way to tell if She is honestly, completely-"

It was at that moment that a powerful explosion ripped into the facility. Wheatley realized that he was definitely far enough away to be safe from damage, but that didn't mean he wasn't scared out of his wits. The roar of noise flooded his auditory processors, and the management rail and catwalks bucked and rattled with the force of the blast.

After a second, everything fell deathly still. He allowed his eye to open, though he didn't remember ever closing it. "Yep, that would do it. Definitely dead now."

At least within his sights, the facility looked a bit shaken, but not damaged. Closer to the blast, however, he expected that there would be much more carnage. Just like the rail's communication network, the entire facility was now smothered in silence. All the manufacturing machines had halted in their progress and even the central air circulation didn't appear to be working anymore. Though he was a robot and didn't care how hot or cold a room was, or whether the air was fresh or not, he was still a little disturbed by how many important systems in the facility had just…stopped without her presence to guide them.

Disliking the awkward silence, he allowed himself to speak again. "Right. Doug's destroyed Her. Knowing him, and the fact that he somehow knew She had taken over the facility from the get-go, he was probably smart enough to escape that explosion. He's alive – but how do I find him?"

He searched his memory banks thoroughly. "He…said he'd find me after this whole ordeal was over with. I'd say it's over by now, but it's still a huge facility. How are you going to find me? Maybe if I sent a signal out on the rail…yes, that's a good plan. I have no idea if or how he might be listening, but it's worth a shot, right?"

He attempted to open a communication link with the rail. Unfortunately, something in the process didn't feel like it was functioning properly. No matter how many times he tried to execute the communication software, it never followed through to completion. He was executing it properly, wasn't he? Yes, he was giving his transmitter instructions, but the transmitter wasn't doing anything with them, almost like it wasn't connected to the rail anymore.

He groaned in mild frustration. "Quite a shame. Now, he has no way to find me. Unless I keep talking, of course. I might be the only other being in the facility besides Doug who can talk at the moment. So, yes, talking it is. I never minded talking, actually. It's quite relaxing, not to mention a useful way to exchange data between two people. Two humans, at the very least.

"Alright, back to the task at hand. In order to help Doug find me, I should move to a place that humans can regularly access." He attempted to roll along the rail, but something was wrong with this mechanism, too. His rail fixture wasn't responding to his commands. Or, more accurately, it felt as if it was receiving the commands, but it didn't have the energy it needed to act upon them.

"Come on, come on…" he pleaded as he strained, willing his fixture to move with as much force as he could muster. He used all the mental strength he had, pushing it to move even an inch to prove that it wasn't damaged. "Please, please, don't be broken. Don't leave me stuck here until I can talk someone into moving me…"

Finally, a sneaky little program shifted something in the back of his mind. The motors in his fixture locked into the rail and whirred to life, sending him forward like a shot. He let out a huge sigh as the tide of relief washed over him. "Brilliant, wonderful!" he chuckled. "I can move, I can still go places. I'm not completely helpless after all! Wow…I was really worrying there for a second. Thought I was going to be stuck in one place until Doug found me."

After a few seconds, he let himself slow to a stop once more. "Where was I going again? Right, a place humans can get to easily. I was already heading toward the Extended Relaxation Center – I might as well go there."

* * *

After a few minutes of sliding along the rail and rambling on to himself, he came to the entrance to the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center control room. Luckily, the door was open. With the rail's communication network acting all out of sorts, he probably wouldn't be able to command it to open anyways.

He let himself fall silent for a moment as he took in the contents of the room. It was very plain and obviously designed for human purposes. The only things worth noting in this small, whitewashed room were the desktop computer and accompanying swivel-chair.

He felt himself jump a little as the Aperture announcer's voice rang clearly through the computer's speakers. "Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center Control Station. If you are looking for the manager of this new and exciting implementation of cryo-sleeping technology, please state your name now."

Wheatley hesitated for a moment. "Well, I'm not exactly looking for the manager, you see, because I'm his-"

"Thank you for your visit, 'Well, I'm not exactly looking for the manager, you see,'" the announcer replied, using a recording of Wheatley's "name" in its announcement. "The manager is not here at the moment, but he can attend to you as soon as he returns. Please state the reason for your visit now."

He sighed in exasperation. "There is no manager! Whoever he was, he probably got himself captured by the maniacal AI that, up until recently, ran this place," he explained. "They needed a new one, which is originally why I wanted to come here. The situation has gotten quite a bit more complicated than that, I'll admit, since She died, but-"

"Interpreting vague input as a request to replace existing manager," the announcer rattled off. "The current manager has been absent from his job for twenty-nine days. In accordance with the Tardy Employee Deportation protocols, the manager is now fired. 'Well, I'm not exactly looking for the manager, you see,' if you are serious about becoming the manager of this amazing new application of cryo-sleeping technology, please say 'yes' at the buzzer. If you are not, please say 'no' instead."

"Wait a second!" he cried out. "This is all going by far too fast. I just need a little time to let all of this sink in." He hummed to himself for a moment. "I don't necessarily want to manage all these humans, but I do want Doug to find me. Do you think I'll be easier to see if I wait out in the hallway instead?"

The announcer answered his question with a loud, obnoxious buzzer.

Wheatley sighed. "Yep, that's what I thought t-"

"Interpreting 'yep' as 'yes'," the announcer interrupted. "Beginning the managerial induction process…"

"No, nonono!" he blurted out. "I don't need to be the manager. It's all fine – I'm just waiting for a friend to, ah, find me."

"Induction complete," the announcer, well, announced, completely disregarding Wheatley's attempt to backpedal. "The Extended Relaxation Center Robotic Instruction Guide will be downloaded into your system momentarily. Thank you for assuming a managerial position over the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center. Remember, testing is the future, but the future only starts with those who survive the present."

Wheatley groaned. As he downloaded the aforementioned job manual, he carefully considered his options. On one hand, taking this job would be an excellent opportunity to fulfill his purpose. There was also the added bonus of assuming a higher-up, better-respected position in the facility. And, because he'd be a manager, the only person with enough authority to fire him would be Her. However, with Her now dead, there was no one left to fire him. He could keep this job for as long as he wanted!

On the other hand, he was pretty sure Doug told him to 'be useful, not noticeable' in order to help him survive in a facility run by Her. That way, if Doug failed to eventually kill Her, Wheatley would still be around to replace Her. However, now that She was dead, that entire back-up plan wasn't even necessary. There wasn't a reason behind his purpose anymore.

Whether or not he decided to take this job, Doug was still going to be searching for him. He supposed it would be far more efficient to stay in one place and wait for Doug to find him, especially now that he was in the Relaxation Center wing, a place humans had easy access to.

So, he was left with two options. One, completely ignore everything the announcer said and wait for Doug's arrival. Two, take on whatever duties the manager had, wait for Doug's arrival, and figure out what to do from there. "Is anyone even using the Extended Relaxation right now?" he asked himself. "Because, if ten thousand lives depended on whether or not someone was managing their rooms correctly, this decision will be a lot easier to make."

"There are currently seven rooms that are both online and inhabited: rooms 131G, 131H, 465B, 465C, 785D, 786D, and 787D ," the announcer informed without hesitation. Wheatley found himself very surprised at this. In the past, whenever he'd had questions, he'd either have to ask a robot and pray they understood it or ask a human and pray they felt like answering. He wasn't used to getting answers so easily. Being a manager was already granting him perks.

"Um, right," he mumbled. "So there are people depending on me, and they could easily die if I mess something up. It's quite a lot of pressure, really, but also a bit exciting, isn't it? I finally have a job that actually means something."

He paused for a moment. "You know what? It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that I want to do this job anyways. Doing it will also fulfill my purpose, however irrelevant it might be right now. The system's already convinced that I'm its manager – I might as well run the place until Doug shows up. Let's see, where to start, where to start…"

Thus, Wheatley's career in the Extended Relaxation began. At first, it was exciting, skimming through the manual and learning all about the high-tech automated systems that governed the place when the manager was away. Further reading also revealed that the manager's main duty was to keep the Relaxation Center safe and functional during emergencies. He could imagine the scenario – the facility being destroyed by some manner of natural and artificial disaster. While the entire building collapsed around them, his quick thinking and cleverness would save the seven cryo-sleeping humans against all odds.

When the sparkle of those fantasies faded, he was left with the dull reality. Since the entire Relaxation Center was completely automated, he literally had nothing to do. He couldn't leave the control station – what if there was an emergency? – but he had absolutely no duties to perform there. Not yet, at least. The only thing he could do was wait.

The hour he spent skimming through the manual again, watching the seconds of his internal clock tick by, and playing I Spy with himself was the most dreadfully boring hour in his entire existence. He itched and squirmed at the thought of waiting another minute, much less the possible days it could take for Doug to find him.

Wheatley had a lot of experience in dealing with his sleep mode. While he'd never had the opportunity to use it in a career where none of the workers needed any rest, he'd certainly used it while he was still being tested by humans, who needed to spend a third of their time lying semi-comatose in order to function properly. Using sleep mode was the obvious alternative to waiting ten hours in the dark without anyone to talk to.

Back then, he had usually set his internal alarm to wake him up at nine in the morning, when the humans returned from their sleep to begin testing him again. However, he didn't have any definite wake-up time for his current situation. Doug could show up in anywhere from ten minutes to ten days. And, if the Relaxation Center suddenly had an emergency, he also needed to be awake for that. With this in mind, he set up his internal alarm with two triggers. It would jerk him out of sleep if anyone walked into the room, but it would also wake him up if the control station outputted any emergency-level warnings.

As he let himself drift off into silent blackness, he wondered blearily if he needed to set a maximum time limit for his sleep mode. No, surely not. Even if Doug had trouble finding him, he wouldn't simply give up the search, would he? He'd be there to wake Wheatley up eventually.

* * *

******When I put up chapter eleven, I will also replace all the previous chapters with their edited, now-grammatically-correct versions. If you've spotted any grammatical errors or unclear phrasing in any part of my story, but you can see that none of the other reviewers have noticed it, be sure to review and let me know about it. Many of you have already done this, for which I am grateful.**


	11. The Future

**Here we are - the final chapter. I'll reserve all my comments on this story for the end, except for this one: you reviewers are downright amazing. Seriously. There is absolutely no way in Android Hell I'd have been able to write this without any of you guys' support. Unlike Testing Euphoria, Review Euphoria doesn't get weaker over time. Every new review gives me that same exciting_ lift_ in my chest, and with that feeling, I gain the determination to push through writing whatever challenging part this story I happen to be working on. Honestly, sincerely, thank you. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Hopefully, we can share this same kind of partnership in my upcoming GLaDOS fic.**

* * *

"Warning: the Aperture Science power reserve has dropped below satisfactory levels. All secondary operations will be terminated."

"Gah!" he cried out, jerking out of sleep mode. His central processors swam with disorganized information until his calibration mechanisms could reset his systems. The fractured world came together around him, slowly reassembling into something that made sense. "Calm down, calm down. It's time for me to finally do something for this facility. Let's see…what am I supposed to do?"

He glanced around the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center control room and was instantly met with an unfamiliar sight. The carpet had almost completely disintegrated, the desktop computer was coated in grime, and a corner of the ceiling had collapsed to allow some sort of leafy vine to snake into the room. "How long have I been out?" He checked his internal calendar. "Wow. A long time. Very, very long time."

The announcer came back on over the speaker system. "Warning: the Aperture Science Reactor Core has reached super-critical levels. Please evacuate before the ensuing thermonuclear meltdown."

"Evacuate? Meltdown?" he panicked. This definitely wasn't what he expected to encounter after being brought out of sleep mode. He quickly consulted his internal map of the facility. It would take some tricky navigating, but he knew there was at least one safe path he could use to take the management rail out of the building. It would lead him to the Aperture Science Radiological Catastrophe Bunker – which, now that he thought about it, would be a great place to hide out until the thermonuclear meltdown cooled off.

"Alright, got a plan. Evacuate the facility, head for the bunker. Don't know what I should do after that, but there's a good chance I'll find someone else from the facility there. They can help me figure out what to do next. I might even see some humans down there, you never know."

Just before he could start moving along his rail, however, a tiny thought nagged at the back of his mind. He was supposed to be taking care of the humans in the Extended Relaxation Vault. Surely they wouldn't enjoy being caught up in a thermonuclear meltdown. Wasn't it his entire job was to keep the humans safe in situations like this?

Then again, he wasn't sure if he would be able to wake up all the humans, corral them in the right direction, and bunker down before the reactor core exploded. Besides, if the humans had been sleeping as long as he had, they would probably be severely weakened, not to mention brain-damaged. They may not even be able to reach the bunker before dying from the exertion of getting there. His self-preservation routines were screaming at him to save his own shell while he still could.

"But it's my purpose!" he told himself. "I have to at least try to save the humans. But what if it's not possible to save them? In that case, it would be in everyone's best interests to save myself, live to fight another day and everything. I don't even like humans. Then again, humans are still people, even though they're mean, selfish, smelly people. Some of them might even be like Doug, you never know. Aww…what am I supposed to do?"

He did what most AI's did when confronted with a massive, mind-bending conundrum: consult the manual. He opened up the Extended Relaxation Vault Robotic Instruction Guide, scanning through the lines of text for something that might seem relevant.

"Vault Evacuation Protocols," he read. "Probably what I'm looking for. Oh…wow, this section's long. At least there are several subsections to check through…'In the event of impending nuclear catastrophe', yes, yes! Huh, there's a few sub-subsections in here too. 'In the event of a reserve power failure'. Yep, that's exactly what's happening. I think." He hurriedly read through the following small paragraph.

The evacuation protocols for a simultaneous nuclear meltdown and reserve power failure are very simple. Abandon the test subjects and save yourself. The Mass Rise-and-Shine Revival System is a secondary operation that will not be functional in the event of a reserve power failure. The only way to revive the test subjects will be to wake them up manually, and there is no possible way a single robot can do this to all the test subjects Extended Relaxation Center was designed to hold before the reactor core explodes.

For some reason, this answer to his problem felt a little disappointing. However, he knew this had to be the right answer. It was written in the manual, after all.

_Do you honestly think the person who wrote the bloody manual had this kind of situation in mind?_

"Well…no," he muttered to himself as he remembered his argument with the neurotoxin manager. "I know I've said that before, but when I did, I never really thought about applying it to this type of problem. Also, whoever wrote this manual is makes some fairly solid points. There's no way I'll have enough time to wake up all…" He checked the computer monitor. "…No new test subjects? Really, there are still only seven of them, after all this time? Anyways, if the manual said it couldn't be done, I shouldn't risk trying it."

_Maybe that's not always true! Really, you can't imagine doing anything outside of whatever someone tells you? It never crossed your mind that they were lying, or wrong?_

He groaned at this recollection. "Fine, so I can't use the manual as the final decision for everything. Does this mean I'm supposed to help the humans evacuate?" Still, every time he thought about taking that dangerous, life-risking action, his circuits buzzed a warning and tiny alarm bells went off in his mind. As a valuable Aperture device, he'd been designed with fairly potent self-preservation programs, and they burned at his processors whenever he even tried to consider a plan to wake the humans.

"That's the answer, isn't it? My programming just isn't going to let me do it. I should head off to that bunker while I still can."

The familiar sensation of guilt tugged at his circuits. "No, no, I shouldn't have to feel that way." He tried to push away the emotion that made him feel horribly selfish and hollow inside. "If I leave them behind, it won't be my fault. It's in my programming – I can't help but follow what it tells me to do. Doing this shouldn't make me feel like a terrible person!"

_But I can change! I know I can. I don't know why I should be able to, or how I know I can, but I do. If you'd just give me a second chance, I know I can get better._

This last memory hit him like someone punching him in the gyroscope. He couldn't rely on the "following my programming" excuse anymore. If he did, it meant he didn't have the ability to push past his limitations. If he admitted that he couldn't help but obey his programs, then he admitted that he didn't deserve any second chances. He knew he had the power to improve himself, the power to try again and be better the next time, so long as he was given the opportunity for a next time.

Suddenly, a new revelation struck him. He was free from his programming. Not just free from the slow, clunky programs that he'd first been imbued with, but completely and gloriously free from every line of code, even the ones he created himself through some effort to fulfill a purpose someone else had given to him. If someone told him to do something he didn't like, he didn't have to do it. Even if his programming tried to force him into it, he could change his programming.

It didn't matter what his function originally was, or what purpose he was told to accomplish. He had choice – he could do whatever he pleased. He could decide what his own purpose was depending on what he wanted to do, not what everyone else wanted. At this thought, it felt like an immense weight was lifted off his processors.

"I can do whatever I bloody want. This is brilliant!" He spun around on his rail fixture, laughing whole-heartedly. "I don't need to 'be useful' unless I bloody feel like it. Absolutely tremendous!"

Then, his current situation caught back up to him. "Oh…hmm. This is a bit of a puzzler, isn't it?

"Well, whatever happens, I do know one thing. If I leave the humans behind, I'm always going to regret it. I'm going to regret it when I wait in the bunker, counting off the seconds until the thermonuclear meltdown cools off. I'm going to regret it when I get assigned to a new job – if I get one, that is. I'm not even sure if there is anyone left in the facility, and seeing as I can do whatever I bloody want now, I might not even want a new job.

"Anyways, no idea what I might want to do when this whole reactor core business gets over with. I could easily end up wandering around, bored out of my mind and regretting leaving those poor humans behind for the rest of my life. But, if I spend the last few hours of my existence trying to save those humans from certain death, then I don't think I'll regret it. I'll…be making a difference for once, at least in the lives of the people I save. And, as far as me dying is concerned, doing it by trying to save someone else's life is a fairly worthy way to go.

"Right, that settles it. I'm not letting myself run away from this responsibility like a bloody coward. I'm going to save the humans or die trying. Hopefully it won't come to that."

* * *

First off, he decided to make the Relaxation Center do a complete vitals scan of all the test subjects. If any of the seven humans had died or become vegetables over the years, then he shouldn't waste time trying to wake them up.

"Relaxation Center central control?" he called out. "Um, here, let me check the manual for the correct commands. Alright…central control, report vital signs of all inhabited rooms."

A buzz of static came out of the control center's speakers, followed by a few scattered syllables. "W-w-welcome to the Ap-er-ture Science Exxxtennnded Re-relaxation Centerrr," it replied in a distorted form of the standard announcer voice. "Today is suspension day number NINE, NINE, NINE, NINE nine nine nineninenineniiiiVVVVT!" Another crackle of static. "Scanning for inhabited rooms. Rooms catalogued. Scanning vitals. Room 1A: None. Room 1B: None. Room 1C: None. Room 1D-" the announcer rattled off.

He huffed in exasperation. The control center had obviously interpreted his command incorrectly. It was reporting the vital signs for every single room, not just the ones with people I them. "Brilliant. I'm going to have to sit through and listen to this as it tells me how every room in the vault is empty except for-"

"Room 1G: None. Room 1J: None."

He felt his eye widen in surprise. "Hang on a moment. Did it just skip a couple?"

"Room 2A: None. Room 2C: None."

"It did, didn't it?"

"Room 2D: None. Room 2E: None."

"Why would it skip a few? It's trying to scan all the rooms, and all of them are offline – if it's skipped one of those, it should skip them all. Why would it…unless…"

"Room 2I: None. Room 2J: None."

"Maybe it didn't misunderstand me at all. Maybe it's still scanning all the rooms with people in them. And…"

"Room 3B: None. Room 3C: None."

"There…were people in some of, almost all of, those offline rooms? And now their vitals…there are none."

"Room 3D: None. Room 3E-"

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" he cried out. "How was I supposed to know there would be someone in an offline room? It makes no bloody sense! You don't put someone in a dead cryo-chamber. That's pretty much a sure-fire way to kill them!"

"Room 3H: None. Room 3I: None. Room 3J: None."

"No one would do something that mental. The humans must have been inside the rooms before they went offline. But why would anyone take all the rooms off the grid when there were people inside them? Must've been an accident. When would it have…oh. The explosion."

"Room 4E: None. Room 4F: None. Room 4G: None."

"Brilliant. It's just my luck that all those rooms happened to get blown offline just before I even started this job. In that case, most of the humans were probably dead before I got here. But who's going to be responsible for it? Me, of course. The foreman is going to eat me alive."

"Room 4J: None. Room 5A: None."

"I suppose a few of them could have survived. You know, if I'd known they were in there. I might've been able to put them on the reserve grid. That would've saved at least a few of them, but I didn't figure anyone needed saving until now." He groaned, frustration tearing at his circuits. "Why can't I do anything right the first time? I need four, five, six tries before I can get anything done properly, and by then, I've broken things too badly to fix them!"

"Room 5G: None. Room 5I: None. Room 5J-"

"You know what, this is taking too long," he decided. "Report all rooms where vital signs are present."

"Rooms 131G, 131H, 785D, 786D, 787D, 999C," the announcer confirmed.

He memorized those addresses to the best of his ability. "Got it. Um, end vitals scan." The control station announcer fell silent. Something about the room numbers felt a little off to him, like a couple of them had changed since last time. "Wait, only six rooms?" Apparently, one of his humans wasn't…alive anymore. "Quite a shame, but I don't exactly have the time to worry about it now."

* * *

Wheatley arrived at Room 999C utterly exhausted. The act of whirring along the rusty, sagging rail for so many miles was beginning to take its toll. Since the rail's electrical and communications network had dropped offline during Her murder, he'd run his rail fixture off of his own power supply. This had been a good short-term solution, but in the present, it left him feeling extremely drained. Sure, he could always take the time to let his internal generator restore his battery power, but with the reactor core ready to blow, he didn't exactly have any time to waste.

Attempting to save the five previous humans also left him emotionally frazzled. It wasn't easy to put all his effort into conserving the lives of five helpless creatures and then watching them die one after another. The way the humans had treated him hadn't helped matters. A couple had simply ignored him, believing he was an automated piece of the facility that had malfunctioned during the years of decay. The others, however, hadn't been so kind. They'd snapped at him, told him to shut up, and worst of all, one of them had laughed at him, like all his warnings about the dire state of the facility were some kind of bloody joke.

He wished he could have pretended that any those humans deserved to die. That would have made it their demise much easier to deal with. Still, insults and disrespect were not enough to justify a death sentence. They weren't acting any differently than some of the other humans he'd met. And yet, as hard as he tried to save them despite their behavior, they continued to drop like flies.

As if that wasn't enough for him to deal with, he was also mentally spent. Wheatley was never one to repeat the same failed course of action over and over and expect a different result, but he honestly had no idea what else he could do. He'd varied his approach several times now, changing the humans' wake-up methods, adjusting their method of travel, attempting both the manual's suggestions and ideas of his own, but nothing worked. The humans still died, whether the cause was a heart attack, a stroke, or an unfortunate accident involving a hundred-foot drop.

He knew what the problem was – the Radiological Catastrophe Bunker was just too far away. The humans, weakened by their long stay in extended relaxation, didn't have the strength to travel to the bunker before their bodies gave out. Oh, he'd tried alternatives. With the last human, he'd made an attempt to move their entire room into the bunker with them inside. Sadly, this path to safety was tricky to navigate at best. If the human hadn't died during one of their many collisions, they certainly perished when the battered room dropped off its rail and plummeted into the near-bottomless pit.

Wheatley had absolutely no idea what to do next. It appeared that nothing short of teleportation was going to get this last human to safety.

Without bidding, a sneaky thought wedged its way into his mind. _Portal guns._

He squinted. "What now?" He'd heard about portal guns a couple times during his work in the facility. Humans would always use them while navigating Her Test chambers. They made holes in space through portal-conduction surfaces, allowing people to teleport from one place to another. "How would portal guns relate to this situation in the…oh."

A few more thoughts crept up on him. _There should still be portal guns in the old Testing tracks. If you get the human over there, then they'll be able to find a gun and use it to teleport to the escape pod that leads to the bunker._

Wheatley instantly became defensive. "What? No! Testing is dangerous, even in the best of circumstances. And, what if the human's been brain-damaged after all those years in suspension? Some of the others were. They might get trapped in one of the test chambers, unable to solve it, and then where'd they be? The odds of them even being able to reach the portal gun are about a million to one, and even when they do have it, there's no guarantee they'll be able to use it to reach the escape pod."

Still, in spite of all the complaints he had about this plan, there was an unmistakable urge to perform it. He had a feeling that something really amazing would happen if he did. "Nope, sorry, been through this before," he told himself. "Whatever happens when I try these kinds of ideas, it's not worth letting someone die."

He sighed with a hint of irritation. "This is a terrible, terrible plan. Chances are, it'll get this last human killed, and then I'll have wasted all that time and energy for nothing. And, worst of all, I'll be stuck waiting in the bunker for who knows how long with nothing to think about except how I've failed at every single job I've ever tried, even this one. Any other day, I'd forget about this portal gun plan and try to think of something else.

"But today, I can't think of anything else. This is the only plan I've got."

He paused for a few moments, trying to reason his way out of his new scheme. However, he knew he was burning through time too quickly as it was, and he forced himself to begin standard wake-up procedures.

Step one: knock on the door. He didn't have the ability to properly knock on the door, per say, but he could mimic the sound with his vocal processors. It felt extremely odd to listen to such a physical, percussive sound coming out of his speakers, but considering he didn't have any hands to knock with, he wasn't left with much of a choice. Room 999C, upon hearing this cue, began the standard wake-up announcements. It wasn't much to listen to, especially after hearing it report the perilous state of emergency to the five previous humans.

Alright, wake-up procedure step two: ensure that the human was well enough physically and mentally to get out of bed. "Hello? Anyone in there?" he called out. "Hello? Are you going to open the door? At any time?"

* * *

**There we go. I hope this fanfic has answered a lot of interesting questions, not just about certain unexplained events in the games, but about who Wheatley is as a person. One of my side-goals for this story was creating the sensation of Wheatley becoming a more important player in his own story over time. In chapter one, he didn't even exist. He's involved in chapters two through four, but he isn't the central piece of those scenes yet. He's obviously the star of the show for chapters five and beyond, with other characters taking smaller and smaller roles until the final chapter, when he is literally the only character present.**

**This is also, oddly enough, the first story in which I've attempted to use extended symbolism. His management rail is supposed to symbolize freedom, and his humanized voice is supposed to represent human concepts. I hope I've managed this new challenge well, but feel free to let me know how I've done. Using symbolism in a fanfic is such a rare occurrence, sadly. About as rare as a Portal fanfic in which Human!Wheatley is openly rejected.**

**Now that this story is over, part of me is going to miss writing about Wheatley and his hilarious state of semi-incompetence. I should be able to deal with it, however, by writing about GLaDOS and hopefully getting her story put on this site within a reasonable amount of time. She has her own set of problems, too, that deserve to be known. Plus, I'm sure at least a few of you are curious about how she managed to get shut down over three billion times. My goal is to have her story completely finished by the end of August, when I go back to school. We'll see how that turns out.**

**Once again, thank you to everyone who is reading this. While most of my thanks have been directed to my reviewers, the truth of the matter is that I'm grateful for everyone who has supported this story, whether it was by reviewing and giving me feedback, putting this story on their favorites or alerts lists, or simply contributing to the 2,848 hits this fic has experienced at the time of writing. It's been one heck of a ride. Thanks for the support, and I'll see you all in my next story.**


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